Thanks for doing this research and providing a great summary of your results! Which of these is the easiest and least technical to get BOINCing? Can someone who just knows Windows PCs set this up without too much trouble or is this approach best left to people with a bit more technical savvy?
I need a new computer soon and may stick with a laptop and then try to up my BOINC/Gridcoin game with these!
I dove in head-first with zero knowledge. You basically download an operating system and flash it onto an SD card. Then you put the sd card into the board, plug in your monitor/keyboard/mouse and give it some juice.
With just a few Linux commands, you should be good to go.
Here's what I did for each of these:
Update the OS first: sudo apt-get update
Install BOINC: sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager
If you want to view/control remotely: sudo apt-get install x11vnc (or pick the vnc of your choice, or you can just ssh, if you're comfortable with command line boinc).
For BOINC crunching purposes, I would stay away from the boards that I listed as having "no mag". These have been a pain.