mike-puddingtime-org-xjcclg.txt (3879B)
1 [1]hi, it's mike [2]Posts [3]Tags [4]Search ☾ night [6]Home / [7]Posts / The 2 ThinkDeck 3 4 The ThinkDeck 5 6 May 24, 2026 · 3 min read · 488 words 7 8 I gave a recipe for a super-minimal “writerdeck” a try, but ended up with 9 something less minimal yet still simple. 10 11 I wanted to just do the recipe lined out in [8]this post from Veronica Explains 12 . It’s just “drop into a tty and use tmux to fire up an editor and a wiki.” 13 14 I had some problems with Debian, mainly owing to me doing too minimal an 15 initial install. So I backed out and came at it with Fedora, and that worked a 16 little better. But I realized pretty quickly that my writing process is not 17 “sit down to a completely clear writing surface and begin to type.” 18 19 When I write I am probably in a few browser tabs, looking up references, 20 checking assumptions, etc. A lot of “ADHD-friendly” approaches assume that the 21 primary attentional issue is one of distractibility. But writing is something 22 of a refuge for me because it’s somewhere I can safely hyper focus: Even if I 23 have ten tabs open as I write, those ten tabs are in service of writing 24 something I am very, very focused on. I don’t find myself drifting around 25 between distracting websites or doomscrolling. I am writing, which is something 26 much more than just typing out words: It’s thinking, learning, examining, 27 introspecting. 28 29 That reframed the question of “what is a writerdeck” for me. 30 31 The other issue with the “just go live in a tty” matter is that the typography 32 isn’t great on the best day. 33 34 But I still like the idea of a machine you can’t do quite as much with. 35 Something that, when you pick it up, is really only meant for one thing, and 36 that is configured to direct you into that thing. 37 38 So rather than starting in a tmux session in a tty, I decided to allow X.org 39 into the picture, but using [9]i3 as the starting point. 40 41 I don’t really want a tiling wm, exactly. Something I learned from dialing in 42 my tmux config is that I like to have one app on the screen at a time. i3 makes 43 that possible. 44 45 My i3 config just opens me up into a fullscreen local ghostty on one workspace, 46 a fullscreen ghostty ssh’d into my mini on the next, and a fullscreen browser 47 with my custom startpage on the third. I can get to each with mod-1 through 48 mod-3 and never really see the underlying wm or desktop, because I don’t really 49 need or want to. 50 51 If I want a quick peek at battery status, date, time, etc. I can mod-f to let 52 the i3 status bar peek through. 53 54 The donor machine, btw, is a ThinkPad X1 Carbon (7th Gen). It’s got a Core i5 55 10th-gen CPU with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. You can get one at this spec or 56 a gen later for under $300 if you look around. The hardware is very well 57 understood by any modern Linux. The display is gorgeous. 58 59 I’m still tweaking the config a little bit. Once it feels a little more gelled 60 I’ll put it in a gist. 61 62 Tagged: [10]Writerdeck, [11]Linux, [12]Thinkpad, [13]Fedora, [14]I3 63 [15]← Adventures in DAV 64 [16]mastodon · [17]github · [18]linkedin · [19]pix · [20]email 65 © 2026, mike 66 67 References: 68 69 [1] https://mike.puddingtime.org/ 70 [2] https://mike.puddingtime.org/posts/ 71 [3] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/ 72 [4] https://mike.puddingtime.org/search/ 73 [6] https://mike.puddingtime.org/ 74 [7] https://mike.puddingtime.org/posts/ 75 [8] https://veronicaexplains.net/my-first-writerdeck/ 76 [9] https://i3wm.org/ 77 [10] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/writerdeck/ 78 [11] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/linux/ 79 [12] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/thinkpad/ 80 [13] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/fedora/ 81 [14] https://mike.puddingtime.org/tags/i3/ 82 [15] https://mike.puddingtime.org/posts/2026-05-15-adventures-in-dav/ 83 [16] https://hachyderm.io/@mph 84 [17] https://github.com/pdxmph 85 [18] https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhallpdx/ 86 [19] https://pix.puddingtime.org/ 87 [20] mailto:[email protected]