Newbie minimalist question
 

What I am looking to do is have an OS that loads only a program for writing (say maybe Pyroom, or even OpenOffice). Maybe it can connect to the internet, but I'd even be fine if it can't. It would need to be able to save the files to a common drive. I have a Windows 7/8 dual boot desktop pc with plenty of extra harddrive space.

What I'm imagining is basically the bootloader comes up and my options are Windows 7, Windows 8, and [Linux distro], when I click on the third option, it goes right into my word processing/text editing software. If I exit that, the computer just shuts off. An internet connection might be useful just for printing, but not essential. I wouldn't need to access my GPU, or even really my mouse (keyboard would be sufficient)

What do you guys think? I've used a couple of different Linux distros, so I'm familiar with how to do a dual boot and that, but I've never tried tackling anything deeper as of yet. Is what I'm imagining possible? How difficult would it be to pull off?

I would recommend checking this one out:

http://linuxbbq.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1013

It's a nice release geared towards writing, with a minimal (tinywm) window manager, ability to connect to the internet, etc.

As for the specifics on dual-booting with your Windows environment, that I don't know, as I don't use it, but I do know it is not hard to do.

I'm a writer myself, and I know this is horrible to say, but I use outlook.com because it has Onenote and Word and saves files to the cloud where I can get to them from anywhere.

I second JWJones recommendation; LinuxBBQ team makes nice stuff. :)

Thanks guys, I'll check out linux bbq. I've dual booted with Windows before, not worried about that part. I was more just wondering if anyone had done anything like this, or if there was a way to build it from scratch. There's usually a way.

As far as an online solution, they just don't work for me. It's not that I can't use them or anything. I've tried things like Q10, Word, OpenOffice, OneNote, and basically anything in between. I actually frequently use a typewriter and just scan the document in. It's less about that, and more about just this concept that I've had that I want to see enacted. It's been an obsession of mine for years, really. I'm pretty sure Linux is the key.

There are about 50 different versions of LinuxBBQ; I think you specifically want the "author" version that was linked to above.

Here is a similar project (a "CLI typewriter") described on the CrunchBang forum: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=33448

That's what I did, yeah.

CLI typewriter is good stuff. Sounds like the author and I are on the same wavelength.

I did a core install with Icewm https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/MinimalCD

On Laptop I did another core install http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti...iX-13.5/alpha/

Then Debian net, Slax (build your own) Or Tiny Core are other options. As well as Slitaz. Austrumi can be another.

If you like Pyroom, a couple of other apps worth checking out are Focuswriter and Wordgrinder. :)

Right, but how to go from a core install to just loading emacs or whatever is where I'm pretty much a blank. I've never messed around with command line stuff, well, not since the ole MS DOS days.

But I will check out some of those core builds and maybe try to build up from there.

I've used focuswriter and some of the variations. They're fine. I basically want a typewriter where I don't have to dink around with changing the paper.

Plus sometimes I just like to do stuff to see if I can.