this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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If you have the time you could engineer a device that operates physical switches to represent bits, sort of like a curta calculator. Make it with enough bits available and engineer in an x86 compatible instruction set and hot damn you've got an electricity free computer, which (if you have the time) you can then manually set the storage bits into positions representative of your Linux filesystem with a minimal install. Figure out how you bootstrap the startup, perhaps engineer correct starting positions for the active bits (memory) such that you have an initramfs.
Can be done, technically you could do it with windows too I guess but boo close source software
Linux doesn't necessarily require an x86 (CISC) instruction set; it also runs on ARM (RISC) devices. https://www.androidauthority.com/arm-vs-x86-key-differences-explained-568718/
I was under the impression that RISCV was poorly supported, ARM has some (more) open platforms so I guess their RISC would be fine, and a significantly simpler undertaking than implementing x86.
Fedora was very excited in a February article and Debian, Ubuntu, and other distros have installer images for RISC-V. With the open source and cheaper architecture compared to x86, support for it will only snowball now. There are also x86 emulators for RISC-V systems, which might perhaps bridge the gap where support is not yet native?
[Happy penguin noises]
There's also a RISC-V laptop - DC ROMA
But it's still mostly experimental, rather than for regular usage.