My pain-crisis computer setup

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