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Does anybody know of any projects similar to this one (and Light Phone 2 [1]) but for desktop OS in laptop format? Apple's products of late does not interest me and I'm stuck with my beloved 2013 MacBook Air until it dies or something better comes along. I have yet to find something better.

I long for a laptop purposely designed for productivity, simplicity and minimalism. Ideally with a custom designed OS (could just be a linux distro checked for compatibility etc.) to go along with it.

Is anybody working on something in this vein?

[1]: http://www.lightphone2.com

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Define "designed for productivity?"

If I'm a writer, I will need very different things than a video editor or software developer to be productive.

That's true and a fair point.

Although I imagine many aspects to be the same for many general needs (while clearly not for very specific needs). Ideally, those which aren't (such as, perhaps, the monitor) for said general needs could offer multiple choices.

I wanted to be inclusive by saying "productivity" since at this point I'd be open for literally anything that is purposely designed with those general goals in mind — whatever the professional pursuit. It may still be superior for my specific needs compared to all the bells and whistles I keep seeing.

Lot of people want eink on a laptop (including myself) - mostly for the benefit that it's readable in the sun and low power. My understanding is the refresh rate is still too slow and the cost of a large panel is pretty high.

I'd just grab a used thinkpad, chromebook, whatever and treat it as a dumb terminal. Pretty much how I used my laptop these days, ssh -X to a powerful machine and go. emacs --daemon / emacsclient (and of course a couple tmux/screen sessions) means I never lose my state.

Yes!

My most recent search for any developments in e-ink laptops was literally yesterday. My understanding is that current e-ink screens are not technically limited to low refresh rates, but are artificially limited to save power. (I think someone hacked their e-reader to run linux at fairly high refresh rates?)

Regarding dumb terminal, if your situation allows you to I feel this is currently one of the better options available. One problems is you still need to browse the web locally and graphically and use various tools not available using emacs and/or the command line. And when internet connectivity is not available.

I was looking for something like that and settled on i3.

Maybe I don't quite understand what you want then. If you want minimal productivity focused machine just setup your system that way. Install the tools you need and call it a day?

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