I have one of these in a closet and wondered for years about how to turn it in a distraction free word processor/simple digital typewriter.
Always loved the netbook form factor, and they were cheap!
Funny thing is that probably I also have some 2GB DDR2 stick somewhere. Last thing I need to check for is the battery, I presume it is completely down after all those years.
Anyway, this article will be very handy for this side project. Thank you!
No kidding. Lots of fun to see a system actually boot in about 1 second.
That aside, I've installed all kinds of systems on my trusty 2009 Dell Mini 9, a fanless netbook. For years, this was a CLI-only Tiny Core Linux system, currently running SvarDOS. While on Linux, I even used it to live record 1,5-hour long radio shows via an old Mbox2 audio interface and some CLI recording software. Created a huge ramdisk just in case, but everything went well. Netbooks are weird and interesting machines.
Yeah, wifi on DOS is doable, but very limited in speed and not exactly straightforward to set up (so much that I haven't seriously considered trying myself). Here's an overview and a writeup:
I would say, you install a lightweight Linux, boot directly into your favorite distraction free editor at full screen and sync the files back to phone and big computer via something like syncthing/Nextcloud/etc.
As for which editor that is, it depends a little bit on your needs, but there are ones specifically geared towards being distraction free like https://ghostwriter.kde.org/
Although markdown may not be what you're after. I personally consider formatting another form of distraction, ao this would be a plus for me. But if you write math-heavy papers, going with something else like Typst or LATeX may be a better choice.
Always loved the netbook form factor, and they were cheap!
Funny thing is that probably I also have some 2GB DDR2 stick somewhere. Last thing I need to check for is the battery, I presume it is completely down after all those years.
Anyway, this article will be very handy for this side project. Thank you!