My Accidental Convergence Setup

2022-03-15

Pinephone and Thinkpad "Convergencing" :-)

I've been gradually tweaking my PineDA (Pinephone PDA) and molding it into my ideal personal computing interface. Well as close to ideal as I can get with my limited skills. One thing that has dawned on me without planning it at all is that it is a pretty great convergence setup. As in I can easily go from using it on device to using it on a different device with larger display and full size keyboard just by logging in via SSH.

The way the launcher interface, tmux and some of the apps I've chosen work in the terminal with mouse interaction continues to function as intended as long as the terminal I'm SSHing from supports mouse. This means all I have to do is login, do 'tmux attach' and I can interact with my interface via touchscreen or mouse just as I would on the device itself. Only with better display and input devices for more involved tasks. Either via mouse or touchscreen I can launch programs via the launcher interface, switch windows by tapping the tmux window titles at the bottom and some of the applications support interacting via mouse/touch (aerc, ncmpcpp, my pop up button widgets...). Of course being command line applications they all have pretty good keyboard shortcuts for everything but I like having options.

I tend to write gemlog posts and put smolZINE together on various devices depending on what is most convenient at the time. Sometimes thats on the PineDA when on the move or the Thinkpad if I'm stationary and it's nearby. As you can see in the photo I do still prefer writing on the Palm with the folding keyboard when it is an option. The sunlight readable display, no distractions and amazing battery life are still pretty great for writing. That keyboard is also actually pretty nice to type on.

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