i've now installed it again, this time on a piece of cheap aliexpressium.

i was slightly pleasantly surprised that graphics acceleration works out of the box (it's intel integrated from 2019(?)). or at least glxgears does a few hundred fps!

haven't yet tested audio or wifi, but graphics was the major problem i was worried about. clearly one 7 year old intel integrated gpu working without effort is hardly everything ever, but it's also very much not nothing. for a start, it bounds "just how bad can it be?".