A few weeks ago I had the ADHD urge to run through a Linux From Scratch setup again - it’s been several years since I’ve really dug into a Linux system layout, and building one ground up is a good reason to try to force myself to remember. Of course, every good project needs an excuse, and at the same time I had the idea to make a TTY-only laptop specifically for writing in order to help promote focus and eliminate as many multi-tasking abilities as possible. That seemed like the perfect reason to set up a super light, low-dependency system.

User requirements

My requirements for this system are very straightforward, and ideally should not have very many dependencies

A text editor

Since this should ideally be the most used item on the TTYpewriter, it should be super lightweight but also super performant. Most of the intended writing is plain text and/or Markdown, so some support for syntax highlighting is a nice quality of life feature, but should not impact performance in any way.

Thankfully my editor of choice for 80% of my use is vim/neovim - even in a fully gui-ized system. It is lightweight, keyboard-driven, and can be extended to have simple syntax highlighting or previewing for Markdown. It’s right at home in an environment without any graphics dependencies, and mature in development so I can focus on using the tool instead of constantly re-learning how the tool works. There are plenty of other similar choices such as vi, emacs, or nano - any of them would be a fine choice, and I’m not trying to revive a holy war. I’ve used vim and neovim for multiple decades and am quite comfortable with it; your mileage may vary.

Git

I sync the vast majority of my writing items back to a git repository on Codeberg. Git has version control in case I want to go back and look at the history of some particular item or change, and using a cloud forge gives me easy access to sync to other devices if needed. I could at some point roll my own Forgejo or Gitea instance, but for now I’d rather focus on content than tools, and Codeberg’s use and privacy policies are in line with sanity and don’t make me feel dirty for using a service.

GPG

Mostly just for commit signing, though being able to encrypt items in transit to myself is a nice bonus.

Hugo

I use Hugo to manage static sites. There are other options; this is the one that I know/use. I don’t technically need Hugo to create or edit files on the TTYpewirter since I do rendering and deployment as part of CI/CD instead of locally, but it’s nice to be able to do things like syntax validation or error checking before commit instead of finding problems live.

Misc

These are just some quality-of-life tools that I compiled in for my own convenience - they aren’t strictly necessary, but solve some sort of small problem.

• 1Password: I use 1Password for my secret storage. Adding a small vault to the local system lets me transfer GPG keys and potentially any other identity documents needed. I don’t expect this will be more than single use, but it solved a need.
• Mutt: I explicitly do not want this particular machine to be any sort of “productivity” workstation, so I thought long and hard about how to handle the potential need to transfer clipboard items from a research device to this one. The answer that I came up with was to make a single-purpose email address and add only that address to the client on this machine. That way i can forward web links or bookmarks or other reference type items if needed, but won’t manage to get myself lost in the distraction mode of email checking / writing.
• Tailscale: I use Tailscale to manage VPN access, DNS, and some other misc. items on most of my internal devices. I haven’t compiled Tailscale onto this machine yet, but probably will at some point.
• Zellij: Terminal multiplexing has been a thing forever. I’ve used Zellij for a while, I’m comfortable with it, I’ll probably install it on the machine. The goal is to multitask as little as possible, but being able to split screen items side by side can be quite useful if I’m needing to copy from one document to the other while writing.
• Bluetooth & Navidrome client: I am undecided on this. I generally listen to music while I’m writing or working, but I don’t necessarily want the overhead of a Bluetooth stack or potential distraction of being able to flip through playlists. For now I’ll leave media streaming to my phone client, but it is a future consideration.

The hardware

The nice thing about being in an environment without any graphics dependencies is that generally speaking the hardware requirements are very, very low for day to day work. I could theoretically do simple plain text word processing on a Pi Zero - certainly if I’m using Vim. The problem is that compile times for those packages would stretch in to the measurement of days - been there, done that, I’m all set, and I’m quite happy to no longer be living that life. I was able to narrow my hardware wants down to a few key elements:

Primary concerns

• 11-13" screen
• Lightweight
• Extended battery life
• x86 hardware for software compatibility

Secondary needs

• WiFi
• 256 GB SSD
• 8 GB RAM

My initial thought was to find a MacBook Air from around the 2013 era. Battery life was stellar, the screen is more than adequate, they are physically lightweight, and use Intel processor for compatibility. This seemed like a great plan until one downside - even on 10+ year old hardware, consumers are willing to pay an Apple tax, driving up prices. Additionally, Apple has a tendency to use soldered-on components, meaning I would be stuck with whatever RAM/storage was installed on the machine which limited sourcing options. After consulting with the Fediverse, I was able to hunt down a ThinkPad x390 which met all of my primary and secondary needs for about $50 plus shipping. Technically speaking it is also a touchscreen and can fold the screen back on itself to have a tablet-esque form factor on demand, but those features are lost when working in a text-only environment.

The results

The project has turned out better than I expected. The machine is easy to carry around, and I had forgotten how much of a joy I have working in a text-only environment. Aside from some video requirements, I could likely run my daily driver on LFS again and be quite happy. One of the major tests is going to be battery life; suspend and hibernation seem to be working quite well, giving me several days of sitting on my desk with the lid closed and power not connected while only consuming about 50% of the battery voltage. Use, however, seems to be using battery at a considerable rate. Having the screen on for about 90 minutes has consumed about 15% battery life (50% -> 35%). The math suggests that should be approximately 10 hours of active uses, which is certainly not atrocious. However, I have not yet installed any power management on this device, so I’m sure the CPU is running at full voltage for very minimal system load; being able to power scale should yield some gains.

Who should use a TTYpewriterOS?

I am admittedly more distraction-prone than the majority of the world; however, I fully believe that more people should work in a minimalist setup to help promote focusing on a singular goal at any given time. We live in a world that increasingly attempts to emotionally reward the concept of multitasking, but studies have consistently shown that quality of work decreases exponentially for each additional task the brain attempts to focus on.

Should more people install LFS?

The concept of doing a Linux from Scratch style install is probably the part of this project that raises the most eyebrows. People can certainly understand the desire to be able to focus on quality work; building an operating system “from scratch” in 2026 feels like insanity. While that is probably a true sentence, it is my largest argument in favor of doing it - operating systems of all types are all relatively turnkey, and there are a lot of details that the OS just quietly takes care of in the background. This is incredibly powerful, and generally a net positive, but knowing how much is a distribution’s opinionated choice as opposed to the core technology can be very enlightening.