Tinker WriterDeck OS turns nearly any old laptop into a distraction-free writing machine

Some of the most interesting gadgets-with-keyboards I've seen over the past few years have been distraction-free writing devices, or WriterDecks. These devices, which are basically the modern version of the word processors of yesteryear, include purpose-built hardware from companies focused on a niche market as well as DIY solutions.

But if you've already got an old laptop lying around, maybe there's no need to build or purchase anything new. You could just use distraction-free software. And that's exactly where Tinker WriterDeck OS comes in: it's a free and open source operating system that can be installed on just about any old laptop that you may have lying around to turn it into a distraction-free tool for writing… and not much else.

In a nutshell, Tinker WriterDeck OS is a GNU/Linux distribution that should run on just about any computer with a 64-bit Intel or AMD x86_64 processor. But it has no graphical user interface, no web browser, and very few applications pre-installed.

When you boot a laptop running the operating system it won't load a desktop environment. Instead it loads a headless version of Debian 12 in the background and dumps you straight into the Tilde text editor so you can start typing right away.

Well, almost right away – when you press the power button on an old Dell Inspiron 3000 series laptop running the operating system, it takes about 20 seconds for Tinker WriterDeck OS to boot and load the Tilde text editor.

Keep in mind that a text editor is not the same as a word processor though. While it supports light and dark mode (as well as some other color schemes), there's no spell checker and no auto-save feature, for example. So you'll probably want to hit Ctrl+S periodically to make sure you don't lose data.

But sometimes that's exactly what you want for tapping out the first draft of your thoughts. You can always transfer your text document to another device when it comes time to proofread and format your documents. Since the operating system is based on Debian, there is support for USB flash drives, allowing you to copy your files to a removable drive for transfer to another computer.

And if you really want to dive into the underlying OS, there is a "Developer mode" that's accessible by hitting Ctrl+Q to exit Tilde and access a Bash command prompt that you can use to access the file system, change keyboard layouts, install an alternate text editor or even gasp connect to the internet and synchronize your files to cloud services including Google Drive, Dropbox, or Nextcloud.

via Hackster and /r/writerdeck

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