Time to talk about my writerdeck

jlundberg

The stress relief of a plain old Linux terminal should not be underestimated. Not only for writing, but for shell sessions too. I love my Raspberry Pi for that.

ramses0

Just zellij instead of tmux, it's so much better!

dragonfax

Reminds me of word processing on DOS back in the 80s and early 90s. Pre-WYSIWYG.

itrunsdoomguy

Awesome machine. Missing Doom though.

daoboy

I'm desperately awaiting the perfect eink device for this. I've got a great writing setup on Obsidian that really works for me, a royal kludge mechanical keyboard...just waiting on the next gen of eink The Boox One Note Max was sooo close, but they almost immediately discontinued the product and probably won't be supporting it long. Suggestions are welcome

normie3000

> I'm trying to be more intentional with my tech choices. I want devices that do one thing really well, and that when I'm done with that one thing, I can put them away, and do something else. I don't want everything to follow me around everywhere. Sign me up. I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio. Bonus points if it supports some kind of cartridge system, size between credit card and audio cassette. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

manaskarekar

Doogie Howser M.D. vibes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX0_Tuzr4wE

LeoPanthera

Consider wordgrinder, a console word processor, as distinct from a text editor. https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder

vidarh

I don't think I could go this far, because I'd have too many devices to switch between. But I like the overall idea. It also fits in well with something I used to think about a lot: Computers and the internet have caused a major shift toward hiding a lot of things that used to be much more apparent. E.g. your important papers would be in a physical file. Your books would be on the shelves. Your art on the walls. Visitors and family members could see them. Quite a few things I have in common with my late dad were a result of finding his books on the shelves as physical objects. Now most of the books I've bought (and a couple I've written) over the last couple of decades are on my phone or my computer, and not visible to anyone who doesn't know where to look. I've tried to be deliberate about showing my son the books I think he'll like, but those of my dads books, and manuscripts he wrote, that I ended up picking up and reading were only partially those he showed me - many more were books he had no inkling I'd like, or didn't think were age appropriate, that I stumbled on over the years. Moving all of those things into files on general purpose devices, away from physical objects, feels like it is unmooring us from parts of our immediate surroundings.

dangus

I like the idea of the setup and the philosophy behind it but I don’t like the implementation as much. If I’m spending a lot of time with text I’d really like the text and editor to have a much better aesthetic appearance than what I’m seeing here. I also think having something with graphical capability is nice to have but I know that’s a preference thing. For me, a mouse is a valuable tool in a text editor even if that usage is occasional. I also think there is a lot of manual setup of things like keyboard brightness controls and battery status that are already built in to every mainstream Linux distro imaginable. I would have gone about it in some other way like: 1. Install Fedora/Linux Mint/whatever 2. Make a login script that opens Obsidian or an editor of choice upon login and puts it in full screen mode. 3. Hide the KDE taskbar and/or just choose a highly minimal window manager. 4. Done.

ltbarcly3

It looks like a chromebook running vim in a 50 point font. I can't wait to read 50 pages of how to do that!

fsckboy

HN deletes certain words at the beginnings of submitted titles: could we add "It's time to talk about" and potentially also "my"?

chungusamongus

The way people are coping with the current hellscape that is 2026 is interesting to me. Somehow, it always seems to be internalization. Like, if only I can lock in using this distraction free method, if only I start buying more physical media, if only I use a dumb phone and an mp3 player for my music, etc. etc., somehow that will resolve the intractable shitstorm happening right now. And none of that is even going to be a drop in the ocean in terms of making your life better. Only collective action has the potential to do that at this stage.

em-bee

the key goal here seems to be to remove temptation. for me just switching to a virtual console and firing up vim there would be enough because switching back to the gui would involve typing a long password which i believe for me would be deterrent enough to not keep switching on a whim. if you are not as easily tempted then running a terminal in fullscreen might just be enough.

a1o

I would love a KingJim Pomera DM 250 but I can’t have it shipped easily and it is hard to find in a physical store.

stavros

Jesus christ I cannot believe it took this article for me to realize after so many years that leaving the root password empty would set my user up for sudo. Every single installation, the first thing I'd do is log in and lock root and give my user sudo! No more of that! Thanks, this article!

salamander014

I've wanted to do this for a while. Thanks for detailing your setup! I hope one day I find the time to try it. I've also always yearned for more usability from just the command line. There's no tui spotify client, is there? Maybe I should break out my mp3 collection again... I'm trying to think of what else I'd really need to not need a GUI machine for my day to day. Maybe email? Lynx and other tui browsers are not usable on today's web. Maybe there's a subculture to find somewhere that also appreciates reader-mode / lack of javascript? If so anyone please lead me to the promise land!

tedd4u

1) Cool! Only think I can recommend is using use a taller 4:3-ish screen (like a Framework) for this. You could maybe have two columns of text available. 2) More broadly, one tip I've found to reduce phone engagement is to set the phone to black & white only. It's significantly less interesting and prone to sucking you in. (You can do this on iOS & Android.)

homeonthemtn

This is what Lao Tzu writer studio will be once the hardware version drops. A specialized writing deck akin to a modern type writer but feature rich and sleeeeeek

hank808

"Writerdeck' or simple word processor? They were first sold in the 1960s or 70s. Why? Buy, not build I'm thinking.