On Thu, Mar 27, 2025 at 03:18:19PM -0700, Russell Senior wrote: > >Introducing postmarketOS: Alpine Linux-based distro for > >smartphones, tablets, and more, that emphasizes device re-use and > >user freedom.
My old hands are too jittery to use a gesture-based "smart phone or tablet; I hit backspace maybe 60 times typing the first line of this paragraph, and that with a clicky-key QWERTY keyboard. If the Alpine distro is as mod-friendly as laptop linux, I can imagine designing and making a bluetooth dongle with a clicky "backspace" and also an "enter/execute/send" button that helps me "dejitter" my input before causing a difficult-to-reverse action. I can design and program the tiny single-chip CPU circuit board if someones else 3D-prints the plastic case, and the code that connects it. ----- And as a Really Spiffy extension, I can imagine an alternative dongle driven by a breath switch, usable by quadriplegics for mousing and text entry. That would resemble a digital circuit project I helped create as a teenager, more than 50 years ago. Our "quad box" was a toaster-sized box of TTL logic with a breath switch, a DB25 RS232 serial output, two rows of lights, and a scan rate knob. This box enabled a fully paralyzed quadraplegic to "blow" serial ASCII characters that could drive a teletype, dial a telephone, summon a nurse, turn lights and radios on and off. The bottom row of lights was an adjustable rate scan; when the breath switch was blown synchronous to a lower light, it would light a "bit" in the upper row. The last light in the row was "execute", which would send a single serial byte from the RS-232 output port to connected devices. The AMAZING "component" of this kludge was the disabled user. After months of all-day practice, our disabled users (mostly "wounded warriors" at the Oregon Veterans Administration Hospital) learned to "blow" 30 bits per second. We had to redesign the clock circuit and frequently tweak the sequential cadence to keep up with their growing skills. It's AMAZING what a mentally-normal person can learn with a 5000-hour-per-year training schedule, and a brain capable of talking much faster. Such a system can be VASTLY improved in software, with additional voice input and modern technology. The interface could be to an open source "smart" phone rather than a box of chips and lights and serial RS-232. That's why "postmarketOS" may enable MILLIONS of people to conquer much greater challenges than my own. How many "Steven Hawkings" are out there? Ready to Rock Our World using an evolved breath switch (or eye movement, or ...) interface. Freeing the challenged and CRUSHING smart-phone monopolies are just the beginning. There will be regulatory pushback financed by "Monopoly Big Business". Serving "wounded warriors" FIRST would give the open source movement far more formidable political clout, with the energetic help of MILLIONS of "abled" veteran allies helping their comrades. ---- Full disclosure: I am horrified and disgusted by what politicians send our warriors to do. I am inspired by warriors who strive to create "quick and CLEAN" victories, minimizing the killing and destruction before the munition makers learn how to stretch misguided conflict into Vietnam-style "forever wars". So yes, I helped vets, but I also hacked a recruiting office or two, slowing the processes bamboozling gullible teens into cannon fodder. That said, it was a different crew who "reassigned" the water cooler from the Corvallis recruiting office to the lobby of the Oregon State University campus police. Took almost a year for OSU Kampus Kops to notice the "Property of the United States Government" tag riveted to the back of the never-reconnected water cooler. ALL THAT SAID - I presume many of the above hacks can be implemented in Linux, justifying this blovating posting to the PLUG list rather than PLUG-TALK list. But leave the water coolers where they are; a "pissy" cop is better than an inebriated pissy cop. Keith L. --- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
