I think because the PCEmulator on the low power esm32 chip supports DOS and ELKS is just as limited and there is much less software for it.

As an alternative to DOS in the PCemulator that's running you could use FreeDOS or a port of Linux. https://github.com/ESP32DE/Boot-Linux-ESP32S3-Playground https://youtu.be/pj0a91vlcGo

While DOS is limited, you could port your most used tools or software to DOS or port them, there's a vim and emacs port, you can play interactive fiction, read e-books, program in Turbo Pascal 5.5/7.0, Turbo C / Borland C++ (1.x - 3.1), use hypertext, sqlite, markdown, perhaps use long filenames with FreeDOS or Calmira for windows 3.0?

> what's the rationale for x86? To run vintage software?

Sounds reasonable. In an off-grid situation, best to stick with software written before the mid-2000s.

Then search for Raspberry Pi laptop cases and go for the one that can hold your choice of eink display + driver?

It does seem a bit strange given the overall focus on power consumption and battery life. Surely emulation is a very heavy tax on the hardware? Imagine what it could do with software running natively.

Well, the creator chose to use a regular ESP32, which is Xtensa based, and is poorly suited for this type of application.

It's really weird anyways because the ESP32 fairly old nor as useful as something like the C6 which on paper could run Linux but without floating point.