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CobrastanJorji 3 hours ago [-]
This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job.
That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, after all that effort to make sure you'd have the perfect environment for uninterrupted writing sessions, installing tmux so that you'll be able to do multiple things at a time.
michaelbuckbee 2 hours ago [-]
It it reminds me of a lot of friends who wanted to "start blogging" and their first step was writing a new static site system from scratch.
embedding-shape 2 hours ago [-]
But how am I supposed to be productive writing blogposts unless I can copy my favorite Clojure templating library into Nix first, so I can have completely statically and reproducible blog posts building from markdown together with the nicest type of templating?
bigyabai 9 minutes ago [-]
If we're all being honest, I'd rather read the Clojure/Nix templating blogpost instead of the 10,000th "why human interaction is important" bearblog essay.
eichin 31 minutes ago [-]
yeah, part of my current writing push was made more successful by two things:
* I am not allowed to use a blogging system I wrote. (Really, I've written three or four at this point and need to stop, and there are plenty of existing systems that still align with my idiosyncratic constraints.)
* The blog must not have any meta content about blog tooling.
(I cheated a little on the latter by having an extra "site" blog for that - which lets me get the words out but doesn't "count" for the writing goal. A useful outlet, but it meant an extra month or so before "real writing" outnumbered meta writing :-)
yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago [-]
It's very convenient to have a first project all ready to blog about, fresh in your mind and everything:D
cortesoft 2 hours ago [-]
I think it is great to combine two personal projects into one!
For me, I can't learn anything unless I actually have a purpose for it. So if I wanted to learn how to write a static site system, I would also need to think of a reason I need one!
I went with paper and pen precisely because there was always more I wanted to do with my computer work flow.
nine_k 19 minutes ago [-]
When I need to write something, and I have a computer, and something is inconvenient, I can quickly (well, within minutes, maybe 30 of them) alter it to my liking, and return to writing.
When I only have a pen and paper (which I used extensively for writing at school), many things may be inconvenient, but there's no way to fix it. This may turn into a source of a low-key stress, and interfere with my writing much more than tweaking a computer would.
I use Emacs, an ultimate tweaker's tool, for writing every day. Last time I had to tweak something in it was a few weeks ago, and it took maybe 2-3 minutes. It's a small price to pay for a tool that just does what you need, when you need it, with zero mental load, and zero frustration.
obsidianbases1 2 hours ago [-]
Pen and paper for writing. Computer for editing.
cortesoft 2 hours ago [-]
I hate handwriting with a passion. I have my whole life. I have horrible handwriting and my hand gets sore 5 seconds after I start writing.
I am sure it is because I don't hold my pen/pencil correctly, but I think after 43 years I am not going to suddenly fix that.
NathanielK 28 minutes ago [-]
I am similar. If I physically write a couple times a week, my hand adapts though. It's a skill like any other.
Fountain pens are nice too since you don't need any pressure.
My writing looks a lot better if I just force myself to slow down and be deliberate, but honestly it's a constant battle. I'd definitely benefit from practicing penmanship on it's own.
sixtyj 2 hours ago [-]
Paper notebook. I wouldn’t recommend loose sheets of paper. :) After 15 years of writing notes on loose sheets I would start differently :)
Go Tim Ferris way - notebook where the first page is left for the table of contents, and number all even-numbered pages as first step.
kaashif 2 hours ago [-]
This reads like someone with ADHD took Adderall and accidentally focused hard for a day on the wrong thing. It has happened to me.
I guess if this writerdeck works persistently for many projects then fine. But if every 2 projects the writerdeck gets revamped then it seems like a way to get a dopamine hit or distract ones self. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't seem like it's a net benefit in terms of focus.
cortesoft 2 hours ago [-]
> focused hard for a day on the wrong thing
Entirely depends on what the author wanted to focus on. Who are we to say what is the right or wrong thing to focus on?
TeMPOraL 2 hours ago [-]
I built my whole career on focusing on the wrong thing. In fact, focusing on the right thing makes me slow down, struggle, and get bogged down with frustration. I still learn 10+x faster when focusing on the wrong thing, and after two decades of this, I now know I have to regularly focus on the wrong thing with passion - those are the moments I pick up knowledge and experience that, few months to years later, people pay me to apply to their problems.
nine_k 14 minutes ago [-]
Structured procrastination [1, 2] was invented full 30 yeas ago, and works very well, given some skill.
This is me. I’ve gamified it to the extent that, to control my passion, I play tricks to ensure that the right thing becomes the wrong thing. My brain must believe it is procrastinating.
For example, I often don’t pay my bills (the money isn’t the issue). I have to have sufficient debts that they become convincing boogeymen. Work can’t feel like escape if there’s nothing to escape from.
akerl_ 18 minutes ago [-]
What a strangely hostile thing to say to somebody's earnest post about their setup.
nicbou 2 hours ago [-]
Same. However, for a while, I did not need to work much, and indulging in such things was an absolute delight. It was entertainment, but it also benefited me when I actually worked.
ungreased0675 13 minutes ago [-]
I recently installed Alpine Linux as part of a side quest and was blown away by just how fast it was without running a GUI or loading up a bunch of background programs. It was so fast a little voice has been telling me my daily driver laptop should run a minimal Linux distribution like Alpine.
iib 3 hours ago [-]
If anyone wants to try this without the intricate setup, if you have a linux system, you most probably can just press Ctrl+Alt+F3 and drop into a tty console directly. To return, you have to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Ctrl+Alt+F2. You also have multiple consoles, up until F12 probably.
I used to use this a lot when trying for a less distracting desktop, just like in the original post.
SubiculumCode 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, and if you want it to boot directly into a tty mode run: sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
As an aside: on some of my computers it is Ctrl+Alt+F2 but on others it is Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to graphical mode.
spl757 42 minutes ago [-]
I'm a proverbial greybeard and Ctrl+Alt+F7 used to just be what you did to get back to your desktop GUI.
FWIW, right now I'm typing this from Ubuntu Studio 24.04 and it's Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get back to the GUI. Ctrl+Alt+F1 shows you the bootup output scroll, +F3 to +F6 will give you a login prompt to drop into a shell. +F7 to +F12 just give me a blinking cursor un the upper right corner of the display.
I'm kinda surprised only +F3 to +F6 give me a shell login. Three isn't that many.
TeMPOraL 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe this have changed over the years, and I rarely if ever used these combinations to switch to TTY except for emergency (OOM, or window manager breakage), but on every Linux system I ever used, graphical mode was on (Ctrl+Alt+)F7.
richardlblair 9 minutes ago [-]
I find fhe discourse here hilarious. Haven't most of us built our skillsets and careers out of side quests?
There is so much I wouldn't know or understand if I didn't go down the odd rabit hole.
daoboy 4 hours ago [-]
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.
Reviews are wildly polarised.
* Some folks find it to be the best thing ever [long battery life, the new patch makes the eink surprisingly fastly responsive, decent keyboard, no distractions]
* While others find it terrible [it's still eink, that's a lot of money for a device that doesn't actually do much]
That looks really cool, but that price point. I could get a Steam Deck + travel keyboard and still come out ahead.
Is that the true price for a low volume, niche product? Eink monopoly continues to make the world worse?
Looked it up, and the original One Laptop per Child came in around $200
1shooner 11 minutes ago [-]
I was gifted a Traveler several years ago. It is overpriced and bound to the vendor data service for any connected functionality. You can read and write off of it via USB, but it doesn't actually use a true filesystem for your text files, it writes them into the main app's sqlite DB, which in the past has had data loss issues.
My version uses ancient releases of Node and React for the UI for some horrible reason, and it is painfully slow.
I've rooted mine and have it as a project to look at the new OS and decide what to do with it, but if I had the cash I'd look elsewhere.
daoboy 2 hours ago [-]
That homebrew page is pure gold. Thank you for the suggestion!
That's very similar to the setup I'm working on, including the stand. Thanks for sharing!
One of the appealing features on the Note Max was the screen size (13.3"). How do you find working on such a small screen?
drakonka 3 hours ago [-]
For me the small screen is fine as long as I can maintain the mindset of this being a _drafting_ tool, not an editing or structuring tool. I generally don't need to see more than a couple of sentences at a time, and my drafting process is almost stream-of-consciousness as I just focus on getting the words out. If I needed to navigate more to edit or regularly reference prior sections, the small screen would be a hindrance.
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
> The keyboad
Perhaps you should have chosen a better one?!
drakonka 3 hours ago [-]
I chose the keyboard I wanted :)
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
It was a joke on the typo.
drakonka 3 hours ago [-]
Hahaha I missed that completely, sorry.
...Now I kind of don't want to fix it :D
em-bee 2 hours ago [-]
make the "r" a link to this discussion thread. btw you made the typo twice :-)
Ideally, somebody like Modos would create a replacement e-ink display for the Framework.
chungusamongus 3 hours ago [-]
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.
black_puppydog 3 hours ago [-]
Nothing opposes a setup like this to collective action. Given that most of modern technology or at least most of the internet is built to actively distract you as much as possible to extract profit, it's just a sane choice to disconnect from this every now and again if you want to work on things that actually matter. And this can totally include things that are for the collective good, and in collective efforts.
chungusamongus 3 hours ago [-]
It just seems like copium to me. The consolation prize is we get to come up with niche lifestyle preferences to cut out the distractions. We can fine tune our lives to increase productivity. More and more optimization until we're just machines. And then people will use that as a way to feel superior to the sheep who continue to scroll tiktok.
skydhash 3 hours ago [-]
Not really. I only watch movies on my TV, play game on my PS4, and read novels on my Kobo. It’s not about productivity. Having a device tied to an activity is nice for attention and mental load.
chungusamongus 45 minutes ago [-]
You sound defensive.
lanyard-textile 35 minutes ago [-]
Some people merely have the urge to create -- For those people, it has little to do with coping. They would like a distraction free environment regardless.
I'm certainly one of those people :)
It's very meditative to solely focus on the one thing in front of you.
geerlingguy 25 minutes ago [-]
I bought an iPod again this year, and started buying MP3s instead of streaming songs.
It's so nice to sit in a chair, close my eyes, and listen to a soundtrack or an old album.
I'm getting old.
jrflowers 3 hours ago [-]
Me, seeing someone eating ice cream: “Here is one of several copies of The Permanent Revolution that I keep on my person for this exact situation”
chungusamongus 3 hours ago [-]
It's not ice cream though. Quite the opposite. It's this notion that puritanical self discipline at the individual level will somehow get us out of this. It won't.
jrflowers 3 hours ago [-]
OP mentioned owning more than one computer in the post. They could spend all of their time watching vtubers stream gacha games when they’re not writing for all we know
chungusamongus 44 minutes ago [-]
That's a total non sequitur.
shermantanktop 3 hours ago [-]
If it’s something like chocolate brownie truffle ice cream, that’s clearly a bourgeois citizen who needs their consciousness raised.
turtlebits 1 hours ago [-]
You don't need to solve whats going on around you, just whatever works for you. The fact your chose the word "coping" says more about your mindset than those you're generalizing about.
chungusamongus 50 minutes ago [-]
You sound kinda defensive.
ares623 2 hours ago [-]
I agree. Collective action can come in two shapes.
One is that enough individuals take action, and the things you list are that, an individual taking action. If enough individuals do it then goal accomplished.
The other is making our politicians force other individuals to do it.
IMO both are necessary. There's some things where decades have proven that individuals are too "weak" to resist the pull of their urges (and nevermind those urges have trillions of dollars of R&D to make them as strong as possible so it's an unfair battle).
Mezzie 3 hours ago [-]
I consider it a good first step.
Of course people reach for individualized solutions first: We (Americans at least) live in a very individualized society.
But these individualized solutions still represent a shift in mindset, of people believing they have agency around how they use technological tools, and of people believing they should make those choices and not a company or the government. This seems very basic and self-evident to anyone who spends time on HN, but it is genuine progress for a lot of people.
chungusamongus 3 hours ago [-]
Less than 1% of the population is going to do anything remotely close to any of these things. It's just a niche lifestyle preference.
bigyabai 3 hours ago [-]
> And none of that is even going to be a drop in the ocean in terms of making your life better.
I disagree 100%. Collective action isn't ever going to persuade Apple or Google to correct course. Collective action has already failed to compel Microsoft for 30+ years. These companies picked their side and your bargaining has zero leverage if you continue to purchase their products and suffer their indignation.
You can only improve your life by getting rid of disrespectful advertising and low-quality slopware. The victim mindset is a lazy lie, one that you tell yourself to justify a net negative lifestyle.
chungusamongus 3 hours ago [-]
The victim mindset? What about my initial statement implies that I perceive myself or others as victims? Sounds like projection.
mateioo7 2 hours ago [-]
This article reminded me of something I've been thinking a lot these past few months, that is having my computer split in 2 modes:
1. work, having everything available in a desktop OS
2. personal, a console-only mode with a few basic functionalities I consider not time wasting: ebook reader, weather forecast, next sport events, 1 TV show episode per day, calculator, calendar, timer, etc
Since I use the extremely configurable awesomewm window manager, this switch would not be hard to implement and have me locked (somehow) based on day of the week or time on work days.
LE: actually, the console-only mode would be more of a menu-only one with something like rofi desktop [1]. Something very minimal and easy to use.
As I switch between Win and Linux, I have found FancyWM for win10/11 that should do the similar. (Ofc you’ve to use mouse in Windows.)
cl3misch 3 hours ago [-]
> I had to set my syncthing web GUI to be listening on all addresses instead of just 127.0.0.1. I don't love this approach, but again, this thing has nothing private on it.
OP mentions SOCKS proxy but you can also just port-forward the one web ui port instead:
ssh -nNT writerdeck -L 8484:localhost:8384
and visit http://localhost:8484 on your normal machine.
normie3000 4 hours ago [-]
> 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.
CharlesW 3 hours ago [-]
You have hundreds of options for devices like this. Amazon alone shows 200, or well over 300 if you don't need live internet audio streams.
You're about to respond: "But many of these use Android, and general purpose computers are too distracting for me." In that case, you'll need to forego live internet audio streams and buy a closed option with a radio receiver.
Rotundo 2 hours ago [-]
> I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio.
Get a second-hand Apple iPod Touch, remove all apps you don't need.
For just mp3 and podcasts: get an iPod Classic (or Video) and install Rockbox.
Rockbox is amazing.
skydhash 3 hours ago [-]
> I would like an audio device which can play mp3, podcasts, internet radio.
That internet radio is a whole magnitude of complexity, especially with the need for wifi (cellular?) if it needs to be portable. But there are options like specially modified android devices.
I have the Shangling M0 with a 512GB card. I don’t even bother with converting my flac files. A nice other device is my kobo. It holds my entire fiction library with space to spare.
fsckboy 3 hours ago [-]
HN deletes certain words at the beginnings of submitted titles: could we add "It's time to talk about" and potentially also "my"?
ramon156 3 hours ago [-]
I kinda like it. I'd even do something like "its time everyone talks about ..." As long as you don't take yourself too serious, people won't either
I liked it and intend to use a similar setup in the future. There were quite a few "rough edges", unfortunately. In retrospect, a tiling window manager would have been a better choice.
I found Midnight Command to be great for this, with its integrated file manager, file viewer (mcview), editor (mcedit), and diff (mcdiff).
I didn't realize how much I relied on a unified clipboard until I didn't have one any longer. mcedit's clipboard was a file (or one of them was?), so I had to adjust some workflows.
The biggest problem came from my need to view a lot of PDF files. I had a framebuffer PDF viewer that was pretty clunky. It did not work with tmux and PDF files could not be opened directly from Midnight Commander as I recall. This specifically is why I'm thinking about a tiling window manager as I won't have to pick a clunky PDF viewer and the remainder will just work.
salamander014 3 hours ago [-]
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!
qsort 3 hours ago [-]
It's hard to find the kind of person who likes both, but the ultimate CLI enabler is AI. Ironically, since the rise of actually useful agents I've been using less web and GUI stuff and more CLI. git, ssh, vim, tmux, psql, sqlite3, codex, claude. What more can I ask for? The "there's a unix pipeline for that" mentality that was technically true but ultimately impractical 5 years ago now works phenomenally well.
I wouldn't go as far as removing the gui entirely from my machine, but I'm literally down to the modern web browser as the final holdout.
There is a tons of "modernized" TUI since Rust/Go, and even better terminal and shells.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
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.
I’m working on one! It’s early stage, but it’s relatively low latency e paper writing tool with my writing tool Ensō.
I’m calling it Writer’s Block. (I love carpentry and want it to look a bit like a wooden pencil case.) the prototype will be a literal log of wood (guess the name). It makes sense because the larger form factor allows for faster prototyping!
At least the laptops that can still run DOS natively tend to have fairly good keyboards...
risingsubmarine 1 hours ago [-]
Has me thinking about laser-focused task alternatives.
WorldDeck : 3D art / game development
GengoDeck : Japanese Immersion / Studying
TuneDeck : Making music.
SteamDeck : A deck for... oh I think this idea is taken.
Hmm. No i think I'll get back to working... for now.
dragonfax 4 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of word processing on DOS back in the 80s and early 90s. Pre-WYSIWYG.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
Especially with that colour palette it very much gives Word Perfect 5.1 vibes[1], which I suspect is either directly intentional, or indirectly so (inspiration from something inspired by WP)
This is a really interesting system. I find that I end up using an iPad with all my PDFs as reference materials when I'm writing, it would be nice to attach an external monitor in 'portrait' mode which exclusively hosted a single application that could let me select PDFs from my collection and display them on the screen. Then with one unit I'd have what I needed in one place.
hank808 3 hours ago [-]
"Writerdeck' or simple word processor? They were first sold in the 1960s or 70s. Why? Buy, not build I'm thinking.
kibwen 3 hours ago [-]
The author already had the hardware, better to not buy than to buy.
hank808 3 hours ago [-]
You're not gettin' the point. There's nothing here if you think about it for 10 seconds. Any ancient anything, could run vi, or vim, or Emacs, or friggin' wordstar, natively or via emulation or WHATEVER. There's nothing here.
McGlockenshire 2 hours ago [-]
You seem to be missing the entire point of the exercise and perhaps you should go back and read the article again to understand what you're missing.
hank808 2 hours ago [-]
Nopes. I'm strongly suggesting that we already had a frigging word for these things, that's also still valid AF today, and it's "word processor." Not f'n writerdeck or whatever. Dumb.
tedd4u 3 hours ago [-]
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.)
tyleo 3 hours ago [-]
I use the same Mac to write that I use for everything else. But I find it’s more useful to disconnect from multiple screens and just use the laptop on my desk if I need to focus.
Those idle screens taunt me with a desire to use them for Slack or Hacker News when I’m trying to work.
qsort 3 hours ago [-]
Great to see Veronica at the top of HN. She's a great creator, highly recommend her content.
owenversteeg 3 hours ago [-]
I've accidentally made one of these; I broke X on an old thinkpad with Arch and never bothered to fix it.
The problem for me is getting myself to actually use it. Most of the time, it sits there gathering dust. If anyone has tips for this I'd love to hear them.
cyberpunk 3 hours ago [-]
If anyone is considering using a computer like this, I'd recommend OpenBSD for it which genuinely has one of the prettiest console fonts.
It just ... Looks nicer..
Yes, I'm sure you can configure the others to look nice too but shrug OOTB is pretty nice.
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.
FrankRay78 2 hours ago [-]
Anybody else wonder how the screenshots were taken?
ZPrimed 2 hours ago [-]
I think Veronica setup an identical demo copy in a VM and thus could easily screenshot the VM.
elias1233 1 hours ago [-]
Very interesting! But how do you display images?
em-bee 3 hours ago [-]
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 3 hours ago [-]
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.
57 minutes ago [-]
gib444 59 minutes ago [-]
Can I tangent to some love for the Debian TUI installer? Just seeing it evokes such pleasing thoughts. I don't think it's changed a whole lot in at least 10 years, maybe more. I think it's pretty well designed in terms of UX.
I have never seen it crash or bug out.
Even the graphical version is excellent. They've resisted using a web view, thank god (giving you the side eye, Fedora)
I've been doing the same thing in different domains
homeonthemtn 3 hours ago [-]
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
dangus 3 hours ago [-]
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.
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
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!
itrunsdoomguy 4 hours ago [-]
Awesome machine. Missing Doom though.
ltbarcly3 3 hours ago [-]
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!
That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, after all that effort to make sure you'd have the perfect environment for uninterrupted writing sessions, installing tmux so that you'll be able to do multiple things at a time.
* I am not allowed to use a blogging system I wrote. (Really, I've written three or four at this point and need to stop, and there are plenty of existing systems that still align with my idiosyncratic constraints.)
* The blog must not have any meta content about blog tooling.
(I cheated a little on the latter by having an extra "site" blog for that - which lets me get the words out but doesn't "count" for the writing goal. A useful outlet, but it meant an extra month or so before "real writing" outnumbered meta writing :-)
For me, I can't learn anything unless I actually have a purpose for it. So if I wanted to learn how to write a static site system, I would also need to think of a reason I need one!
When I only have a pen and paper (which I used extensively for writing at school), many things may be inconvenient, but there's no way to fix it. This may turn into a source of a low-key stress, and interfere with my writing much more than tweaking a computer would.
I use Emacs, an ultimate tweaker's tool, for writing every day. Last time I had to tweak something in it was a few weeks ago, and it took maybe 2-3 minutes. It's a small price to pay for a tool that just does what you need, when you need it, with zero mental load, and zero frustration.
I am sure it is because I don't hold my pen/pencil correctly, but I think after 43 years I am not going to suddenly fix that.
Fountain pens are nice too since you don't need any pressure.
My writing looks a lot better if I just force myself to slow down and be deliberate, but honestly it's a constant battle. I'd definitely benefit from practicing penmanship on it's own.
Go Tim Ferris way - notebook where the first page is left for the table of contents, and number all even-numbered pages as first step.
I guess if this writerdeck works persistently for many projects then fine. But if every 2 projects the writerdeck gets revamped then it seems like a way to get a dopamine hit or distract ones self. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't seem like it's a net benefit in terms of focus.
Entirely depends on what the author wanted to focus on. Who are we to say what is the right or wrong thing to focus on?
[1]: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-procrastinate-and-s...
[2]: https://pennyzenker360.com/how-to-procrastinate-and-still-be...
For example, I often don’t pay my bills (the money isn’t the issue). I have to have sufficient debts that they become convincing boogeymen. Work can’t feel like escape if there’s nothing to escape from.
I used to use this a lot when trying for a less distracting desktop, just like in the original post.
As an aside: on some of my computers it is Ctrl+Alt+F2 but on others it is Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to graphical mode.
FWIW, right now I'm typing this from Ubuntu Studio 24.04 and it's Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get back to the GUI. Ctrl+Alt+F1 shows you the bootup output scroll, +F3 to +F6 will give you a login prompt to drop into a shell. +F7 to +F12 just give me a blinking cursor un the upper right corner of the display.
I'm kinda surprised only +F3 to +F6 give me a shell login. Three isn't that many.
There is so much I wouldn't know or understand if I didn't go down the odd rabit hole.
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
Reviews are wildly polarised. * Some folks find it to be the best thing ever [long battery life, the new patch makes the eink surprisingly fastly responsive, decent keyboard, no distractions] * While others find it terrible [it's still eink, that's a lot of money for a device that doesn't actually do much]
You can find a selection of alternatives, and homebrewed options, here: https://www.writerdeck.org/
Is that the true price for a low volume, niche product? Eink monopoly continues to make the world worse?
Looked it up, and the original One Laptop per Child came in around $200
My version uses ancient releases of Node and React for the UI for some horrible reason, and it is painfully slow.
I've rooted mine and have it as a project to look at the new OS and decide what to do with it, but if I had the cash I'd look elsewhere.
One of the appealing features on the Note Max was the screen size (13.3"). How do you find working on such a small screen?
Perhaps you should have chosen a better one?!
...Now I kind of don't want to fix it :D
I backed it myself.
I'm certainly one of those people :)
It's very meditative to solely focus on the one thing in front of you.
It's so nice to sit in a chair, close my eyes, and listen to a soundtrack or an old album.
I'm getting old.
One is that enough individuals take action, and the things you list are that, an individual taking action. If enough individuals do it then goal accomplished.
The other is making our politicians force other individuals to do it.
IMO both are necessary. There's some things where decades have proven that individuals are too "weak" to resist the pull of their urges (and nevermind those urges have trillions of dollars of R&D to make them as strong as possible so it's an unfair battle).
Of course people reach for individualized solutions first: We (Americans at least) live in a very individualized society.
But these individualized solutions still represent a shift in mindset, of people believing they have agency around how they use technological tools, and of people believing they should make those choices and not a company or the government. This seems very basic and self-evident to anyone who spends time on HN, but it is genuine progress for a lot of people.
I disagree 100%. Collective action isn't ever going to persuade Apple or Google to correct course. Collective action has already failed to compel Microsoft for 30+ years. These companies picked their side and your bargaining has zero leverage if you continue to purchase their products and suffer their indignation.
You can only improve your life by getting rid of disrespectful advertising and low-quality slopware. The victim mindset is a lazy lie, one that you tell yourself to justify a net negative lifestyle.
1. work, having everything available in a desktop OS
2. personal, a console-only mode with a few basic functionalities I consider not time wasting: ebook reader, weather forecast, next sport events, 1 TV show episode per day, calculator, calendar, timer, etc
Since I use the extremely configurable awesomewm window manager, this switch would not be hard to implement and have me locked (somehow) based on day of the week or time on work days.
LE: actually, the console-only mode would be more of a menu-only one with something like rofi desktop [1]. Something very minimal and easy to use.
[1] https://github.com/giomatfois62/rofi-desktop
As I switch between Win and Linux, I have found FancyWM for win10/11 that should do the similar. (Ofc you’ve to use mouse in Windows.)
OP mentions SOCKS proxy but you can also just port-forward the one web ui port instead:
and visit http://localhost:8484 on your normal machine.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.
You're about to respond: "But many of these use Android, and general purpose computers are too distracting for me." In that case, you'll need to forego live internet audio streams and buy a closed option with a radio receiver.
Get a second-hand Apple iPod Touch, remove all apps you don't need.
For just mp3 and podcasts: get an iPod Classic (or Video) and install Rockbox.
Rockbox is amazing.
That internet radio is a whole magnitude of complexity, especially with the need for wifi (cellular?) if it needs to be portable. But there are options like specially modified android devices.
I have the Shangling M0 with a 512GB card. I don’t even bother with converting my flac files. A nice other device is my kobo. It holds my entire fiction library with space to spare.
The unreasonable effectiveness of…
All you need is…
I liked it and intend to use a similar setup in the future. There were quite a few "rough edges", unfortunately. In retrospect, a tiling window manager would have been a better choice.
I found Midnight Command to be great for this, with its integrated file manager, file viewer (mcview), editor (mcedit), and diff (mcdiff).
I didn't realize how much I relied on a unified clipboard until I didn't have one any longer. mcedit's clipboard was a file (or one of them was?), so I had to adjust some workflows.
The biggest problem came from my need to view a lot of PDF files. I had a framebuffer PDF viewer that was pretty clunky. It did not work with tmux and PDF files could not be opened directly from Midnight Commander as I recall. This specifically is why I'm thinking about a tiling window manager as I won't have to pick a clunky PDF viewer and the remainder will just work.
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!
There is a tons of "modernized" TUI since Rust/Go, and even better terminal and shells.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX0_Tuzr4wE
I’m calling it Writer’s Block. (I love carpentry and want it to look a bit like a wooden pencil case.) the prototype will be a literal log of wood (guess the name). It makes sense because the larger form factor allows for faster prototyping!
https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
At least the laptops that can still run DOS natively tend to have fairly good keyboards...
WorldDeck : 3D art / game development
GengoDeck : Japanese Immersion / Studying
TuneDeck : Making music.
SteamDeck : A deck for... oh I think this idea is taken.
Hmm. No i think I'll get back to working... for now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#/media/File:Wordpe...
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.)
Those idle screens taunt me with a desire to use them for Slack or Hacker News when I’m trying to work.
The problem for me is getting myself to actually use it. Most of the time, it sits there gathering dust. If anyone has tips for this I'd love to hear them.
It just ... Looks nicer..
Yes, I'm sure you can configure the others to look nice too but shrug OOTB is pretty nice.
i found something here, but i am not sure if these are the right ones: https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/pcvtfonts?sort=Fil...
Not only for writing, but for shell sessions too.
I love my Raspberry Pi for that.
I have never seen it crash or bug out.
Even the graphical version is excellent. They've resisted using a web view, thank god (giving you the side eye, Fedora)
A lot of respect and love for Debian!
X-Windows and it's ilk are awesome software.
For a single purpose machine it is unnecessary
I've been doing the same thing in different domains
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.
No more of that! Thanks, this article!