I am trying to put together my own take on a low-distraction writer deck platform. The brain will be an SBC, either a Pi Zero or a “Le Potato” Pi 3 alternative, partly because neither has built in wifi, but more because I already have both of them. I’m not quite to a point where I want it truly minimal, but I would like the word processor to be “the” app that it can run.

Software wise, I’m looking at two early leaders. MS Word 5.5 running on DOSBox, or Wordgrinder. That version of Word is oddly nice, but I’d prefer to have something run without needing the overhead of DOSBOX or an x86 emulator. With a tweak to the terminal’s color palette, Wordgrinder could probably be good enough, and I thoroughly appreciate that it does in-line text styling, but it’s still a bit more limited than I’d like. I am wondering though, if there isn’t a solution that would run native on Linux in an ncurses terminal like Wordgrinder but have some of the QoL improvements something like that mature DOS version of Word would have (mouse support, spellcheck, easy color scheme changes, more comprehensive shortcuts).

I would love something like a rich-text editor that is simply markdown behind the scenes, possibly with a spellcheck engine. I don’t need full WYSIWYG, but I do want that basic visual of formatted text without having to mentally parse the markdown code, so I’m not looking for a two-phase solution with VIM and LaTeX, a two-pane markdown editor with live preview, or a note-taking app. If I have to install a DE, I guess Focuswriter or AbiWord could work, but I’d like to avoid that if possible, especially if I go with the Zero.