Searching a better OS

[William Shakeme]

It's my first time writing on a forum so be nice ^^

Been a Windows UI user all the way (writing this from Windows AME https://ameliorated.info/),
now I spend quite some time searching for a replacement.
Linux Lite --> xubuntu --> TinyCoreOS used and I read into Linux from Scratch and Gentoo documentation.
I read and searched the TC forum for similar posts.
However I doubt that I'm intelligent enough to understand Linux from Scratch nor do I think it is necessary for my purpose.
Currently I think with the right hints from some TC Pro's like you, we can make this work here.
I got enough time and dedication to dig deep down enough to create a real solution, please excuse me if I've overlooked a post,
or writing this the wrong way … can't see the forest because of all the trees atm.


The reason:

I use highly personalized keyboard layout, layouts for multiple languages (four latin based with ä,ü,ų,ž etc, cyrill)
Plus I need to use http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/#get-started-with-plover


What I'm looking for:

A real solution! I would like to have a .iso of the custom OS with my layouts and document the process & make it available for others to recreate.
The OS should just boot, have shortcuts for changing between layouts, run Plover, Firefox and Anbox.


Why TC:

After switching to AME, playing with Linux and reading Free as in Freedom, I started to see PC's from a whole new perspective.
I'm 27 and started to train touch typing a year ago, went from 40-60 WPM's, five finger something technique to stable 60 100% accuracy or +80 WPM's with solid accuracy. And h*ly f*ck … I've been using PC's so wrong. So now I'm hungry and I want to dig as deep as possible, learn, contribute and document as much as possible. TC looks like the most bare bone distro, so I want to start here if it that makes sense.


The questions:

A: Would it be reasonable to reverse engineer TC to the point where a custom layout is available right after boot as default layout, if possible?

B: If that seems hilarious from your point of view, which ideas do you have that will bring me closer to the end goal?


Thank you for reading this bulk.
Have a great day!

[NewUser]

With ezremaster.tcz, Tiny Core makes your real solution, provided you can get your changes made, Plover compiled. Your changes, eg a keyboard that will handle several different languages AT THE SAME TIME difficult. Good luck, Tiny Core is a base on which you may build your dream.

[hikari]

I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve?
From my point of view, your path (Linux Lite --> xubuntu --> TinyCoreOS) are not a good choice for you right now. Try those popular linux distros (ubuntu, centos, redhat, etc) first, then play with these "lightweight" to find out what you need.

[curaga]

Complex custom keyboard layouts are fairly easy with Xorg. What may cause the most trouble is an Android emulator, they tend to be pretty heavy and require lots of things. Certainly you can achieve your goal with most Linux distros, just takes some learning.

[gadget42]

interesting:

https://www.openstenoproject.org/about/

sharing is caring

[William Shakeme]

Greetings,

basically I found the mini.iso's of either Ubuntu or Debian, installed in VM and added i3wm, firefox and that's pretty much what I wanted.

Base ~ 48-80mb + ~250mb i3wm and + ~250mb firefox = everything I need with under 600mb



That's how deep I've been diggin as of now, maybe with the screenshot you can see what I was looking for.

Maybe one day I'll have enough knowledge to use TinyCore as Base system but rn it's just more convenient to use Ubuntu, shame on me.

Ubuntu has the Workmanlayout, which is the base for my custom layouts in their installer.
https://workmanlayout.org/?trk=public_post_share-update_update-text

                http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/                           

or

https://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/




Don't just have a good day, have a great day!

[NewUser]

Tiny core 13 includes i3 and, of course, Firefox. Problem solved.