May 31, 2026
Last week, I read a Veronica Explains blog post about creating a writerdeck. For anyone unaware, this is a standalone distraction free device used for writing. I'd heard of them before, but for some reason, it hadn't occured to me that it would be relatively straightforward to create using an old laptop. Neat. A bit of searching let me to Tinker's WriterDeck OS , which seemed to be an option for creating a writer deck with little additional configuration needed.
Then it occured to me that I had an old Chromebook in the ewaste heap in the basement...
I don't write a lot, but I realized that this would actually be cool as the parent of a preschooler. It's a device that will open, turn on, and when you press the keyboard buttons, letters appear on the screen. No games designed to hijack his brain, no internet, limited ability to break things, and if it does break, well, it was destined for the ewaste heap anyway.
The chromebook turned on. The battery charged (I think it does have battery issues? I think that was why it was in the ewaste heap??)
Creating the bootable USB was easy. My main laptop is a System 76 that I set up to dual boot POP OS and Windows 10 (Foreshadowing!!). I use Pop OS as my main day to day laptop. Windows 10 is used for 2 things: ArcGIS Pro, and checking out ebooks from my library and putting them on my ereader, which requries Adobe Digital Editions. On the POP OS side, I used popsicle to create the bootable USB.
Then, onto the Chromebook. This is where things get interesting. I followed an article that showed me how to boot the thing into developer mode and enable USB booting. I plugged in my bootable USB, and tried to boot from it. The thing emits a couple loud beeps, and does nothing. Clearly something didn't work.
First thing I checked: Could I boot my System 76 Laptop with the USB? YES! The thing appears, boots, and... AUTOMATICALLY begins installation. The Writerdeck OS documentation says it will do this. I skimmed that part. Mea Culpa. However, I would humbly suggest that at least a: "Warning! This will install WriterDeck OS and overwrite your hard drive, do you want to proceed, Y/N?" might be useful. Maybe? Anyway, This is an OS put together by one person, and it DOES say it will do this. Luckily, it destroyed my Windows partition, not PopOS. I lost some shit. It was probably not important. I don't use ArcGIS Pro at home much these days, as it was mostly for when I was in grad school and adjuncting. (Can I write a tangent on how adjunct professor positions require you to have your own laptop for the software you are teaching? And the fact that I had to buy this Chromebook in the heyday of the Covid lockdown to figure out how students could remote into university PCs to do their work, since there wasn't much documentation on using Chromebooks to do this, but that was all a few of my students had??? And adjunct positions pay next to nothing?). Apparently it's time to figure out how to get those library books on POP OS. This will likely involve WINE and Calibre and removing DRM. Don't tell my library. I'll delete them after reading, I promise. Maybe I'll write about it on my writerdeck.
Back to the Chromebook. The problem was not the USB. The internet eventually led me to MrChromebox. This site is dense! It is helpful! My Chromebook can totally support linux. I just need to install new firmware, and...
...take off the back of the device so I can remove a Read Write screw???
...ok! Sure! Some swearing and several screwdrivers later, that's done. (I should probably find a tool to pop open computers. It's the worst.)
And then I updated the firmware. It ran successfully, and then it didn't turn on. I was sure I'd bricked the thing, but the Chromebox website says if it doesn't turn on, try an hard reset. And that worked!
Booting from the USB was easy, and WriterDeck OS installed with no input from me, lol.
It works! It uses Tilde, which doesn't have much documentation. This is a bit frustrating, but between reddit and poking I've changed the background to colors that my astigmatism doesn't hate, and increased the font size a bit, and it works great! I'm saving a lot in case the battery dies on me unexpectedly.
My Kiddo likes typing and moving the little blue cursor. I am using it to write this story. I like it. I had less than a year to move away from Windows anyway. I should probably install OSGEO live on that partition. This chromebook is saved from being ewaste for a bit. I kinda want to make more. 10 year old Chromebooks are probably a dime a dozen. It feels good to be hacking at old laptops again.