Old Computer Use Case: A 9front-Powered Offline Workstation for Writers

I have a castoff Compaq Evo N600c laptop that was passed on to me by someone who hadn't used it in well over a decade, and who had also forgotten their Windows 2000 password.

To them, the machine was merely a laptop-shaped paperweight. To me, it was an opportunity to fulfill a dream I'd been harboring for a long, long time, which was to set aside a separate computer to be used primarily for text editing, and secondarily to induct my kids into the mysterious and arcane world of the command line. (It is at the command line where actual computer literacy is developed, and not in the dumbed down realm of cartoonish looking GUI-based apps, but that's a topic for another day.)

While my primary machine, a Dell Inspiron running FreeBSD 12.1, does everything I need and want it to, the main drawback for me as someone who struggles to focus on a given task at hand, is precisely that it does everything I need and want it to. All too often, when I'm trying to concentrate on finishing a blog post, or an important email, I can hear the siren's call of the web, and all that information just waiting to be absorbed. Especially if I'm composing the text directly in a web-based interface, unlimited distraction is always just a new browser tab away.

As a hopeless information junkie, non-stop internet access has long been the bane of my existence when it comes to staying on task, whether in an office setting or at home. I've often thought of it as being akin to a recovering heroin addict trying to focus on their work while sitting beside a box of clean syringes and a Costco-sized bag of smack.

Roughly ten years ago, I read about an author who had an old 386 PC running Windows 3.1 situated in a walk-in closet as her dedicated workstation for writing and editing, and nothing else. No internet, no games, no distractions. (I can't remember where I read about this, or even whether it was a print article or online.)

Though I'm not a Windows fan, this sounded like paradise to me, and since then I had dreamed of having a similar setup of my own.

The first draft of this blog post being composed in Acme, a multi-window text editor and work environment. This is what a distraction-free workstation looks like.

Beyond running a non-Windows operating system, the primary difference with my version of the above is that it would have to be a portable workstation, as I sometimes need a change of location to keep my attention span up and running. (Back in the 1990s, when I was a community newspaper reporter, I would often fend off writer's block by retreating to a coffee shop or pool hall, and kick out one or more first drafts in longhand. Later, in office settings, I would do something similar by commandeering a vacant boardroom and spreading my foolscap notepad and a plethora of documents as widely as needed on the tabletop.)

And so, after trying out a number of other OS options (including NetBSD, OpenBSD, Unixware 7.1.1 and OpenServer 5.0.7), I have settled on 9front, which has become the de facto upstream steward of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system codebase since Alcatel-Lucent stopped actively supporting it. (There are other forks, but 9front seems to be where the action is.)

For the sake of fully appreciating 9front as a distributed operating system, especially with what appears to be some really cool networking tricks up its sleeve, I want to eventually figure out how to get this machine network-connected (assuming it actually supports the Intel Pro/100 network adapter)--in the meantime, however, for the purpose of fulfilling my dream of having an offline, text-focused workstation, 9front delivers the goods, and then some.

(I use the term 'text-focused' not to imply a non-graphical terminal, but rather a graphical terminal that encourages text-based work.)

While NetBSD and OpenBSD certainly encourage text-based work, they both also work perfectly fine on this box, but perhaps a little too well, including networking. Anytime either were installed on this machine, I had trouble resisting the urge to upgrade them to their latest versions, and then see just how many applications and desktop environments would work within the Evo N600c's constraints. Needless to say, I didn't get any writing down, though I should note that I consider NetBSD to be the ideal general purpose OS for a machine of this vintage, but that's yet another topic on its own.

The current setup also fulfills a long-held desire to actually use Plan 9 in a production setting, rather than as a toy to poke around in before installing something else. Since installing 9front last week, I feel like I've upped my Plan 9 IQ simply by sticking with it and forcing myself to learn by doing. Unlike the versions of UnixWare and OpenServer noted above, 9front has insanely awesome USB support, which means being able to easily transfer my files from this machine to my FreeBSD box, and then to the outside world. (For those dipping their toes in 9front, USB sticks are automatically mounted under /shr. In my case, the USB stick is accessed at /shr/sdU7dafd/.)

And because my 9front learning curve is (for now) centered around text editing and file handling (with a particular focus on Acme as a work environment for both), I am more or less playing in the writing and editing sandbox, rather than falling down any programming or gaming rabbit holes when I'm supposed to be working.

Although I'm completely productive on this computer, I also somehow feel more relaxed and at peace because of it, which leads me to think that perhaps productivity in and of itself is a non-pharmaceutical way to alleviate depression and/or anxiety, and also goes to show that having the latest and fanciest graphical desktop environment isn't the answer to everything.

As the late Terrence McKenna once said, "the future is a forward escape into the past." While I won't try to put words in his mouth (after all, he was actually talking about psychedelics), and infer that he was out to validate my own admittedly marginal desktop preferences, my current experience with 9front as a writing-centric workstation at least feels like a pedestrian window into that particular wisdom.