Here's one who wrote a thesis on a Raspi Zero (well, in part) and Wordgrinder (all the way). Dropped in to say that Wordgrinder paired with Pandoc is a great and capable package. The writing experience that Wordgrinder offers is par none that I've seen. Good enough that I settled and never looked further. Watching this thread to see if there are options...
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Yeah, one of the interesting things I’m learning here is that a lot of folks just don’t see much value in something that shows formatted text but also obfuscates the encoding that lies behind it. It probably says something about me as a person that I want to style my text while doing first drafts, yet here we are.
What distro/configuration did you use on the Zero? Right now, I’m fighting with mine to get something that loads fast but preserves the killer feature of Wordgrinder for me, which is the “proper” display of bold, italic, and underlined text.
I had Arch ARM, but that is no longer an option on the first Pi Zero since they dropped support for anything less than ARM7. It's still applicable for Zero 2 though.
The config was such that I had my phone and a fold-up Bluetooth keyboard for a terminal and connected to the Pi over Bluetooth PAN. The Zero had a PiVoyager board and a 26650 Li-ion cell for power - the whole thing fit in a case the size of a pack of cigarettes :D I could just have that in my bag, slap the phone and keeb on any surface and type away.
I agree that setting the structure of the document as you go is the most effective way of doing things. Doing a separate pass for formatting is a chore best avoided!
The gparted live CD comes to mind, in that it boots up into a minimal fluxbox GUI where only gparted is installed.
You could do something similar with libre office. I'm not sure the easiest way to achieve this, but probably find a distro with a minimal install option and only install libre office.
The pi can run Wayland pretty well so I would not worry about it not being fast enough.
How about Obsydian? Seems like a great and flexible app, plugins to add as much as you like, and free for personal use.
Not sure about the zero, but seems to be ran successfully on other raspberries, see https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=344018
Obsidian is a bit heavy for what I'm after, which is barely a step above a "digital typewriter." I'd definitely have to run a window manager or DE, and I'd have to hide much of Obsidian's functionality anyway. Thank you though!
Obsidian was already mentioned. I prefer to use it with Typora as a minimal, distraction-free markdown writer app.
Typora is a good looking app, but I think I've probably got Focuswriter in mind if I go with a full graphical environment. Typora is also a "proper" markdown editor in that it's not hiding the code characters, though I like how it also implements them in the single pane. I can't seem to find a way to turn that off, and it's counter to the idea here, which is not quite WYSIWYG, but definitely farther in that direction. Thank you, though!
I would love something like a rich-text editor
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.
I'm not sure to understand your requirements in regards to Markdown 'behind the scene'? I mean, if you don't need visual preview you should be able to use any text editor or word processor and save your work as a text file, right?
But I would say: Any recent version of LibreOffice, on a computer without Internet. It's WYSIWIG and even though it's not 'markdown compatible' one can easily write using Markdown with it.
Before switching back to pen and paper for drafting all texts (no more Markdown needed at all ;), that's what I used to use.
No emulation, no hacks, no nothing to install. It comes with a decent speel checker (at least Grammalecte, in French and it used to work with Druide Antidote, non-free English and French speelchecker but they stopped offering a Linux version). Also, no two phases editors. Just plain WYSIWYG. And with styles it should even be possible to have kinda formatted/WYSISWYG Markdown combo but I never really tried to devise it as it was not worth the hassle for me: even on long form writings I barely need more than the occasional italics I can easily type by hand in Markdown, with the ability to save the work in a text file, and also LO can export to HTML or epub (using the right extension, as the native export is meh).
BTW, Jonathan Franzen used to install a fresh copy for MS Word on a cheap laptop without WiFi card and whose Ethernet port he filled with glue so there was no way for him to connect it to the Internet. But that was before Microsoft switched to a sub-model that required a monthly check online to let the user run Word. Don't know if he still does that, and how.
I used an old ThinkPad (X220) that was more than powerful enough to smoothly run LO (edit: with whatever was the latest release of Debian), hooked to an external display because its own display was shitty at best.
I'm not sure to understand your requirements in regards to Markdown 'behind the scene'? I mean, if you don't need visual preview you should be able to use any text editor or word processor and save your work as a text file, right?
It’s more that I don’t mind if the file format is markdown. I just don’t want stray asterisks and dashes visible on my doc as I’m editing it, but I want to have the option to use some of the style choices markdown offers. I’m also going to be running this on a pretty weak SBC, preferably with no mouse, so LibreOffice is not my first choice. From what I’m seeing, I am beginning to think I’ve identified the best apps for my use case to try out, between Wordgrinder, Word on DOSBox, and either AbiWord or Focuswriter in X11, but I was wondering if I’d overlooked some cool terminal-based word processor.
I used an old ThinkPad (X220) that was more than powerful enough to smoothly run LO (edit: with whatever was the latest release of Debian), hooked to an external display because its own display was shitty at best.
Mine will begin life as the ARM SBC screwed to the back of a 9” display and using one of my mechanical keyboards. If it works well, I’ll design and print a case for it, and maybe design a keyboard specifically for it. It’s as much an electronics tinkering project as a writing one.