Have ever tried writerDeck?

Hello Friends

Just to share. Have ever tried writerDeck?
Where it is reflected to writerdeckOS

I just did realize the existence of both thanks to this video suggested on YouTube

Best to all!

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Fascinating! I’ve never heard of this. It’s rather tempting…

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It seems to be a great way of utilising old hardware.

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It seems to be a great way of utilising old hardware.

That’s the point, but taking in consideration

Requirements:

  • 64bit processor (Intel/AMD)
  • Will not work on an ARM processor

It indicated at:

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Fascinating! I’ve never heard of this. It’s rather tempting…

Many times the YouTube’s suggestions are valuable

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If it is open source, why cant we compile it for other processors?
or
Consider substituting NetBSD … it will run on anything.

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If ut is open source

What does ut mean?

why cant we compile it for other processors?

Some special instruction would be the reason … how portable it can be … it would be problem

Consider substituting NetBSD

What do you mean with that?

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Sorry my typo … I meant ā€˜it’
English is hard enough for you, without my typos.

Netbsd is an OS that will run on almost any architecture … it could do what Writerdeck does.
You could even run writerdeck inside Netbsd using qemu … or you could simply add some wordprocessor app to Netbsd.

There are lots of ways of using old hardware.

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WriterdeckOS on non x86_64 - not possible - I guess… It’s an ISO…

But - the video tutorial from Veronica could easily apply on a 32 bit i386/686 or ARM HF or ARM64 on a Pi … i.e. start with Debian… Don’t install a DE… She even mentioned Gentoo…

I like the scalable fonts on TTY idea…

Yeah - not sure how easy to scalable fonts on Free/Net/OpenBSD console TTY - but the rest should be straightforward… Networking might be trickier?

I’m a big fan of nmtui - I use it on headless servers all the time (except in AWS - where the console is a virtual serialy TTY and tui don’t play well over serial) - heaps easier to use than having to remember obtuse ā€œnmcliā€ command strings…

Having to learn nmcli is like being forced to adopt a new programming language - what was wrong with /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-$NIC ??? What did it improve? And now you can’t even edit resolv.conf - WTF? (yeah I got used to that bullshit in Ubuntu - but why did Red Hat force us that direction, at gunpoint?)…

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The source code must exist somewhere… assuming it is FOSS?

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There are ways to mount an iso as a regular filesystem.

EDIT: found it. This should make it quite easy, unless the iso is encrypted or stored in a non-standard way.

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That lets you see the binary files.
They will be x86-64 binaries.
We need the source code to recompile it for 32 bit or arm.

They have a Github site

I looked … there is no source code there … just a .md file and some configuration.

I suspect it is not open source.? Does anyone know?.

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I checked the iso. It contains a squashfs image which contains an ext4fs image for the liveusb.

The editor they use is open source (well, actually, public domain… there is no license posted), as far as I’m aware. It’s also a dead project.

The script they use to do the actual configuration of the OS is not that big. It turns off the suspend/sleep when you close the lid. So it’s not really a good option.

I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to build something like this based on any distribution. The script doesn’t seem to contain anything specific to any architecture. I guess the dev was just lazy.

I wonder why they included tmux…?

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Can you see what it was based on?
Look in /etc/lsrelease or /etc/osversion … I think those names are right?

Yes , if it is just a cutdown of some Linux, there will be no source code… . you have to go back to Debian or whatever. That makes it a spin, not a distro.

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Yes, Debian.

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
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OK , so it is open source. It is a spin.
Only one Debian release behind current.

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Curious exercise. Any value to it?

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I think any attempt to make a distro or a spin has some value, at least in the eyes of its Maker.

People like making things. That is where innovations occur… with the hands on stuff.

This particular attempt may be of limited use I feel, because new computers are inexpensive and there is a good supply, so why would one bother with old junk for serious work?

I spent my whole life battling with computers that were seriously limited in capability. It is very time consuming. The freedom we have today is something to be gratefjul for.

The things I could have done 50 years ago with todays computers would have changed my career. There is no going back, those times are gone forever.

Every generation experiences this. I worked with an elderly gentleman who told me that for his PhD he had to invert a 48 x 48 matrix, which took him 6 weeks on a mechanical calculator. I remember showing him that then-current mainframe computers could do that in about 5 minutes. Today it takes about 1 second.

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I think any attempt to make a distro or a spin has some value, at least in the eyes of its Maker.

Of course, it is the ā€œtoyā€ of the maker/creator

People like making things. That is where innovations occur… with the hands on stuff.

Agree, the pleasure to create and play with something

This particular attempt may be of limited use I feel, because new computers are inexpensive and there is a good supply, so why would one bother with old junk for serious work?

the pleasure to create something … geek power :nerd_face:

I spent my whole life battling with computers that were seriously limited in capability. It is very time consuming. The freedom we have today is something to be gratefjul for.

That days required more efforts due the limited hardware

The things I could have done 50 years ago with todays computers would have changed my career. There is no going back, those times are gone forever.

But the knowledge remains forever :beer_mug:

Every generation experiences this. I worked with an elderly gentleman who told me that for his PhD he had to invert a 48 x 48 matrix, which took him 6 weeks on a mechanical calculator. I remember showing him that then-current mainframe computers could do that in about 5 minutes. Today it takes about 1 second

Your old school have more morals and love for the science … I always take the example of my father and uncle. I remember their tools since I was a child … now all has changed

New generations since 2000 and 2010 have become lazy … now see the AI impact

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The use of this is limited.

Sure, tmux is present, but I’m not exactly sure for what.
Tilde, which is unmaintained, is its text editor.
No means of transferring what the writer has written to a different device in order to edit it, or send it off to further literary persons.

On top of that, Tilde isn’t exactly meant for writing prose. When I’m writing prose I expect some nice capabilities, which software like scrivener and Tintero has. Both, however, are closed source.

To be fit for release I feel:

  • That there should be a user-friendly way to sync with another device and/or some cloud.
  • An actual editor for PROSE should be provided.

If the developer had installed neovim with quite some tweaking and plugins to make it fit for editing prose, it would be quite a nice thing. I guess it’ll be a cold day in hell when that happens.

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