If you run an ARM OS in it, the performance is great. If you run an x86 one it’s unusable.

That still needs the Virtualization entitlement on iOS which I thought you couldn’t get if you’re outside Apple, unless you’re jailbroken and can work around the signing requirement. Otherwise UTM runs emulating the OS and is slow as Christmas.

Ah you are probably right, I remembered that being gated behind something but I assumed it was the altstore which was the thing you had to do for full virtualisation.

> If you run an ARM OS in it

Only arm64/aarch64 operating systems I know are GNU/Linux or Mac OS X. I doubt the iPad is strong enough to run a usable Mac OS X virtual machine, and I don't see a ton of value running either a Linux distribution as CLI ("headless") or with a GUI on an iPad as an app in a window?

I use an app called "iSH" which gives you an x86 Alpine Linux distro and a shell you can play around with. It's pretty useful whenever I need to ssh into something, and if you're patient you can actually do some programming on it with vim or whatever text editor you want. Even clang works!

iPads definitely has enough CPU power for ARM macos, limiting factor is the RAM.

Even the base tier ipad is more powerful than a raspberry pi which is more than enough for a gui linux.

The ipad pro contains the same chip as the macbooks and comes with 8gb/16gb ram options. It's more powerful than the average Windows laptop.