Running RuneScape on low-power single board computers is, in theory, a cost-effective solution for botting. However, it's less favorable considering the capabilities of SMART and hardware virtualization (e.g. if you're not already running Windows, create a VM; then run multiple bots in that VM).
Sadly it looks like this will not be possible for some time. All devices I am aware of have GPUs which implement OpenGL ES of some version, which, for reasons unknown to me, is kept separate from the main OpenGL interface description. For this reason using common ARM devices will not allow you to use an X11 desktop with hardware acceleration. Programs can specifically request OpenGL ES acceleration but this leaves you with a situation similar to Optimus (or the Linux equivalent, Bumblebee) except that you can't actually solve it.
Solutions I am aware of:
- Port X11 to support OpenGL ES.
- Create a shim that will run OpenGL programs of reduced functionality under OpenGL ES.
- Wait for CPU performance to catch up.
So far the last seems like the only reasonable solution.
There's a group of people running private servers which seems to have an RS Classic client that runs on Android, but I'm not sure if they simply reimplemented all of the graphics themselves: link.