this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2022
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Are there any operating system designed to be as distraction free as possible?

Without internet access, as few programs as possible and with a layout that is designed to be boring.

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[–] mekhos@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What work are you trying to do? Because "Without internet access, as few programs as possible and with a layout that is designed to be boring."

Looks like conditions that could be met with a piece of paper - not being sarcastic - sometimes a computer is too much of a distraction and sketching out an idea or writing a first draft on paper is massivly beneficial to overall productivity.

[–] libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Im interested in structuring information. So for example editing text, using spreadsheets or mindmapping.

[–] mekhos@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well then I'd go for a live iso like tailsOS with persistent storage option. That way you boot into it for "focus time" and don't set it up the network connection.

[–] GenkiFeral@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

not a bad idea. Kali, from what I recall, has a much prettier UI though. You can use a solid wallpaper, of course, or make your own wallpaper with things you need to remember listed. your apps will cover it up, but ctrl+alt+d will get you desktop. I have Debian with KDE, too, because it is easier than most others to add and delete sutff. KDE is very bloated, so you'll need to delete a lot of stuff. I really love AntiX (Debian-bsed, but a bit harder since it has a separate repository) and it is so light that it still works well on a cheap 2.0 flahs drive. there are even lighter version (core, I think), but those take a lot more work to set up. Test out a few on flashdrives with persistence set up - before installing on a hard drive. The guy who mentioned terminal was right, though. More and more, I am finding terminal (for some things) better. I use a separate work space just for tmux and use mpv --no-video for music to drown out roommates, ranger in a few panes with micro editor customized, htop to close mpv when it misbehaves... There seem to be many autistic computerphiles, so you might also ask in their forums.

[–] sunblocker@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Check out FreeDOS. It ships a text editor. You can find more than one spreadsheet application on archive.org. I'm not sure about mind maps though. Also, internet works if you want it to but it's totally optional.

[–] sudoreboot@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You can configure NixOS to have as little or as much as you want by setting the right options. Arch allows customising to a similar level but that's less.. configuring and more installing things and tweaking stuff here and there.

[–] weex@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

10000 options whoa. Is there a howto you'd recommend for navigating those? Or maybe an example config if I want the experience limited to a text editor and an nfs mount.

[–] sudoreboot@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

The default configuration generated by nixos-generate-config is a good starting point. From there you can probably find more things to disable or trim down. environment.systemPackages and environment.defaultPackages for example are lists you can make very short.

[–] greensand@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago

i3 window manager in Linux is super minimalistic

[–] beansniffer@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sounds kinda like TempleOS to me

[–] amplifi@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

The UI is far from boring in TempleOS lmao

[–] Jeffrey@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There's https://www.mercuryos.com/

Mercury OS is a speculative vision designed to question the paradigms governing human-computer interaction today.

[–] libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Very interesting, but is it still under development?

[–] salarua@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 years ago

no, it's purely a concept. there aren't any plans i could find to actually build a functional os

[–] Liwott@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Copyright 2019 Jason Yuan Design. All rights reserved.

not open source thought

[–] sunblocker@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Oh, interesting. Adding this to my watch list.

[–] chiefstorm@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I love linux with XFCE

for mobile: graphene OS, or completely vanilla android ( lineageOS )

[–] vi21@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

The last OS that I used without an Internet connection was Slackware.

[–] SrEstegosaurio@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

I'll go with Linux and just configure it properly. Depending on what you want you could even not have a DE/WM

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] HMH@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Even xterm is too distracting with mpv --vo=tct --really-quiet "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" :P

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

And of course it's Rick Astley lol

[–] HMH@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Haha, should have gone with: mpv --vo=tct --really-quiet $(echo aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1kUXc0dzlXZ1hjUQ== | base64 -d -)

[–] weex@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've been exploring vr for this exact purpose. Still have a lot of work to do on the best environment I found but it's coming together.

[–] libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] weex@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Yep, one thing about a headset is that it monopolizes your vision and if you can build the virtual environment, you can choose what is and isn't there. After getting bored with the apps and games on the Quest I decided to explore the most basic part of it, the home environments. In that environment it's possible to open up multiple browsers so I opened one to a CryptoPad, connected a bluetooth keyboard and simply sat there noting problems with the environment and experience.

Since then, I found an app/framework called Lovr that enabled me to build the environment I want in Lua and to chip away at the issues I found. Forked a virtual development environment called indeck to suit my needs here https://github.com/weex/indeck/issues

[–] maxmalrichtig@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not an OS and maybe not 'boring' to use, but checkout the tools from https://suckless.org/

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Using KDE Activities (available on any Linux OS), you can create a setup like this

[–] Yujiri@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

you can easily configure a Linux system to be like this

[–] SudoDnfDashY@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago
[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

WTF, spartanic features and UI, without internet, for this I turn off the PC and done. You can customize EVERY OS to be as distraccion free as you like, even Windows if you want.

[–] sunblocker@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To elaborate on the text editor and spreadsheet front from another thread, FreeDOS ships with a ton of editors. I don't believe it comes with any spreadsheets, however. For a plain TUI desktop environment, PsychDOS offers a simple interface with mouse support, plus a host of useful applications (look at a screenshot of the desktop here; it absolutely is distraction-free). There might be mind map software for MS-DOS that will run on FreeDOS, but I don't know of any.

editors:

  • vim (or the vi-clone, elvis)
  • emacs
  • pico
  • edit
  • ... and many more!

spreadsheets:

[–] GenkiFeral@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

wouldn't using tty with tmux and a few other apps within it be less visually jolting? I love color and design, but must admit my terminal calms me a bit.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Well, FreeDOS is text based, so it should offer an experience similar to any other terminal. The 16-bit colors certainly aren't as nice though, so I see your point.

[–] YSU@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago
[–] Echedenyan@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

More distraction free shell than OS itself.