+1, same here, I've used line editors a fair bit (and enjoying line-oriented interface in general), so rlwrap has been an essential tool for me. Many thanks for your work!
DOS is very much alive these days, though [0]. Text-mode internet is there (should you want online in the first place), and, thanks to some amazing devs, soundcard support has made a huge leap [1].
I use it every day lately (for text-related work and hobbyst-level assembly learning -- my intent is to write a small application to do paid work which involves chopping audio files). And -- I say a single-tasking system is a complete, true bliss in our days. Paired with a 4:3 Thinkpad screen, that DOS environment gives me instant focus for a long time -- which, to me, has been almost impossible to accomplish on a multi-tasking, contemporary-web-browser-equipped system recently.
Apparently, though, there seems to be AI for DOS, too [2]. :) I prefer my DOS machine to be completely offline, though. Peace and harmony for the soul!
+1. I would add RJ The Bike Guy's youtube channel -- straightforward, down-to-earth, no-nonsense videos, may prove immensely useful if you have simple, traditional, cheaper-end bicycles at home, and only a basic set of tools. Excellent explainer; has similar "vibe" to Sheldon Brown's site IMO: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaAK2FaxQ2xiBbAUVZsvDYQ
The blessing and the curse of the Internet. A few years ago, I was getting new bicycle tires and fellow overly analytic bicycle nerds had built a machine to measure the rolling resistance and puncture resistance of each tire[0], so I of course I "had" to spend hours pouring over all the different options.
This was probably a more sensible use of my time than when I spent hours trying to determine which pedals I should get. Is there a reason to get low profile? Oh, this one is 20 grams lighter--oh, but some people report it breaking more than this other one.
To quote on of the best article titles of all time, reality has a surprising amount of detail.
That site is gold. I've had one that was a complete mystery, it all looked and felt perfect but still, it didn't work. I was tempted to toss it and replace it but the fact that it was a vintage Campagnolo made replacing it extremely expensive and I couldn't even find a proper replacement. So in the end I figured out what the problem was and ended up repairing it.
Yeah. There's probably tens of thousands of internet users worldwide with that same story. Myself included: when I was fixing my Bianchi retro road bike's derailleur etc some 20 years ago as a univesity freshman, this site was a definite gold mine, immensely helpful, and taught me a ton. One of my favorite procrastination rabbit holes as well back then. :) And -- a prime example of 1990s era internet and information freedom and layman-level enthusiasm -- selfless sharing of knowledge (and, I wonder if he also used Notepad to write the HTML :). Thanks, Mr Brown, for everything, all the way from Estonia!
Side note: looking at the screenshot gallery on the linked site, it is interesting to see how often audio software GUIs mimic real, physical devices in remarkable detail. Carefully crafted graphics for volume dials, sliders etc.
Another distro worth noting here is EasyOS, a current project by Puppy Linux creator Barry Kauler: https://easyos.org/
I remember having tested it, but can't remember what it was like :) -- at least it didn't make me switch from Tiny Core Linux, which I've used extensively. From a superficial, distro-hopper view, DSL, Puppy, EasyOS and Tiny Core all feel quite similar, I guess.
As a side note, it is interesting to see DSL and TC on the HN front page in two consecutive days of 2025. Both are very old projects; I wonder what's the impulse behind this current interest.
What's the size of your "diskless" NetBSD installation, and how fast does it boot?
As compared to TC, the "out of the box" NetBSD images contain many things I wouldn't need, so customizing it has been a recurring thought, but oh well. The documentation and careful modularity is, obviously, a huge bonus of NetBSD in that regard (even an end-user like me could do some interesting modifications of the kernel solely by reading the manual). TC seems much more ad-hoc, but I assume this, too, is intentional, by design.
Around that time the NetBSD kernels with embedded rootfs filesystem I was making were around 17MB
Today, TCL is 23MB
The NetBSD kernels with embedded rootfs I'm using today are around 33MB
That size can be reduced of course
I don't monitor the boot process on RPi with serial console, I only connect after tinysshd is running, so I don't pay close attention to boot speed. It's fast enough
TCL appears to be aimed at users that prefer a binary distribution; also it provides GUI by default
I prefer to compile from source and I only use textmode hence NetBSD is more suitable for me than TCL
For someone who does not want to compile anything from source, it is possible to "customise" (replace) the rootfs of a NetBSD install image with another rootfs. It is not documented anywhere that I'm aware of but I have done it many times
I use a very minimal userland. I guarantee few if any HN readers would be satisfied with it. If I need additional programs I either (a) mount an external drive and run the programs from external storage, e.g., via chroot, or (b) copy them from an external drive into mfs or tmpfs
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