As you know, I have genetic disease called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (kyphoscoliosis type). And in the long list of symptoms, only one makes me very vulnerable and paralyzed: the "pain crisis." Randomly, I feel so much pain all over my body and it's very hard for me to move. Moving my arms is quite difficult and painful, but I still want to do still something.
That's why I thinking about a small and light setup. I also need a setup that can be used without a mouse.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my "EDS dev typewriter" computer!
Hardware
The only one small & lightweight (1.05 kg/2.31 lbs) computer I have is a small low-end hardware Asus VivoBook 12 E210M with an 11" screen an the following specs:
- CPU: Celeron N4020
- GPU: Intel Graphics 600 at 1366x768 resolution
- RAM: 4GB
- SSD: 64GB
- Wireless: Wifi 5 + Bluetooth 4.1
I can't run full-featured OS with lag or bugs. That's why I choose something else: Linux.
Linux has a lot of distributions designed for specific uses. And after a lengthy search, I find many good things.
The Operating System
I choose ArchLinux for two reasons:
- No applications installed by default. It's just a basic install that I can customise,
- All the tools I need are easy to install.
I need a lightweight window manager which can be controlled by keyboard only. I choose OpenBox. It's a very customisable desktop manager.
The first test was very good. The only problem I have is remembering the keyboard shortcuts! Now I have to add a theme.
I choose the Nord theme , It's so beautiful and also really readable in the night. I themed all my apps to Nord on this computer, and it's really awesome.
Self-hosted cloud
Just few words about my self-hosted cloud solution. I have a NextCloud solution on a small server at home. And it's work like a charm. I have my main dev setup, my maker setup, my laptop and now my typewriter laptop.
I need a solution to synchronise my personal data across all of my devices and NextCloud is a really powerful solution for this. Not too hard to install and configure (just search "nextcloud tutorial" in the search engine), it does the job well.
Writing tool
I love MarkDown to write posts. It's so easy when you know it to format your content. I need an editor who understands and displays proper MarkDown. and I already have it on another computer: Obsidian.
Obsidian is not only a great MarkDown editor, but it's also my second brain. Every post, thoughts or ideas are in my Obsidian vault and with NextCloud, I always have all data with me, everywhere.
Obsidian also have a lot of great shortcuts to be used mainly without a mouse.
Development tool
About dev, I just need "basic development" tools. I don't need every snippets, configs, libraries on this computer. But I want to be able to code if I want when i'm painful.
That's why I use a command-line code editor: NeoVim. It's a powerful editor with some customizations. I've just added NvChad to have many plugins (like phpactor, NvimTree and Nord theme) with easy and lightning-fast installation.
With OpenBox, I can cut my screen in two:
- One side with NeoVim to development
- Other side with my terminal with debugging / errors / exceptions / ...
It run perfectly on low-end hardware, and I'm not restricted in usage. I can continue to build some cool HIVE projects even when I'm sick!
Conclusion
It take only 2 hours to install and now, I have my next-generation EDS-specific typewriter (and small development machine).
Hope you enjoy this post. If you have questions, I will be happy to answer in the comments. If you like my posts and/or my work, please up-vote and reblog this post.
Have a nice day