AWOW AK41 - Multiple Operating Systems

AWOW AK41 Mini Desktop PC – Multiple Operating Systems – Week 4

Last Updated on March 12, 2021

Summary

The AWOW AK41’s 8GM of RAM is sufficient to run VirtualBox providing you limit yourself to 1 virtual machine unless the guest doesn’t use X Windows / Wayland. I suggest you allocate no more than 3GB of RAM to the virtual machine, and limit the number of processors to (at most) 3 out of the 4. This way the host operating system is guaranteed CPU resources at all times. From extensive testing, I found it best to use a distribution using a lightweight desktop, something like MX Linux which uses the Xfce Desktop Environment. Bear in mind the AK41’s Intel processor doesn’t have the grunt of many Intel / AMD processors, so you need to be realistic.

The dual boot option is, in many ways, my preferred solution. First, I rarely need to run multiple Linux distributions at the same time. And this solution offers optimal system performance compared with the virtualization solution. I’m really impressed with the benefits of using a NVMe, but even a regular SSD or (Type-C) USB flash drive is fine for many use cases.

Finally, Wine may be the solution if there’s a specific Windows program you want to run on your Linux system. You don’t get the overhead associated with virtualization, you can run the Windows program simultaneously with your Linux desktop without rebooting, and performance is satisfactory.

All 3 options are viable on the AWOW AK41.

There is another solution if you’ve retained Windows 10 on the AK41’s NVMe SSD. This is to use Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). That’s a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. WSL 2 introduced important changes such as a real Linux kernel, through a subset of Hyper-V features. Microsoft plan to support Linux GUI apps that run alongside regular Windows apps. Expect the GPU hardware acceleration to come later this year.

AWOW AK41
TypeMini PC
ProcessorIntel Celeron J4115 running at 1.80GHz (Turbo 2.5 GHz) with 4 cores and 4 threads
ChipsetIntel Gemini Lake
Memory8GB DDR4 (2133 MHz)
GraphicsIntel UHD Graphics 605
Disk128GB Foresee NVMe M.2 SSD F900F128GBH

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Virtualization
Page 2 – Dual Booting
Page 3 – Wine
Page 4 – Summary


Complete list of articles in this series:

AWOW AK41 Mini PC
Week 11Video consoles: SNES emulation
Week 10Running TeamViewer with AWOW AK41 as the host
Week 9Astronomy on the AK41 including Celestia, Stellarium, Skychart, and more
Week 8Recording video with OBS Studio
Week 7Home computer emulators: FS-UAE, ZEsaurUX, Hatari, Clock Signal
Week 6Web browsing with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi
Week 5Gaming: SuperTuxKart, AwesomeNauts, Retrocycles, Robocraft, DOTA 2, and more
Week 4Run multiple operating systems on the AK41
Week 3Video and audio playback looking at hardware acceleration
Week 2Benchmarking the AK41 with 3 other low power machines
Week 1Introduction to the series including wiping Windows and installing Manjaro

This blog is written on the AWOW AK41 Mini PC.

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hans
hans
3 years ago

have you test a little bit overclocking? are there a few percent possible?