Document: WM-066 P. Webb
Category: LLM 2025.03.27
Spitball with Claude
Abstract
LLMs are fun for idea validation
Body
One of my favorite things to do these days is to take half‑formed
thoughts/ideas to Claude[1] (my LLM of choice) and use its responses
to gain better understanding about whatever. If you’ve been following
me online for awhile, you know that I am OBSESSED with the modular
Jonathan Computer[2], a concept from Apple created in the 1980s that
was never officially released. It was definitely ahead of its time.
It could run Mac and DOS software!! Anyhoo, it’s currently 2025 and
I believe there’s a wide open market for such a thing.
Amongst tech‑minded folks the general consensus around computing
seems to be:
- Windows is terrible and Microsoft is intent on making it worse
- macOS is buggy enough to be a problem and boy, it sure would be
great if we had a Snow Leopard‑esque release (no new features, just
bug fixes)
- Linux lacks suitable replacements for what I do on Windows/macOS
You know what I’m suggesting (applicable XKCD here[3]): let’s make a
new thing!
But before that, let’s get into Desktop Neo[4], the OS interface I’m
also obsessed with. The concept was made by Lennart Ziburski in 2016
under the CC Attribution 4.0 license. If you’ve seen my homepage,
it’s clearly been inspired by it. The tiles in Desktop Neo are
application/system windows and the entire UI scrolls horizontally. I
think that’s pretty cool. The only issue I see with it is…how do I
code within this new paradigm? I currently just tab switch between my
text editor, terminal, and browser so I guess my tabbing would just
scroll the UI? Or maybe it’d be like using Spaces[5] on macOS. I
currently keep my mail app in fullscreen to the left space, my social
apps to the right space, and everything else in the center (main
space). I guess I answered my question.
Anyhoo! I asked my AI buddy to meld the two concepts of hardware and
software into something I’d pay stupid amounts of money for. The
name Claude gave it? Neo Jonathan. Not bad, but I prefer systemÂą
(I registered system1.computer as well because why not?). I won’t
bore you with the 3000 words of our convo thus far, have some
highlights instead.
Creating an operating system from scratch is a monumental task, even
for people who have decades of experience writing low‑level code.
Instead, it’s better to build upon what already exists, like Linux.
With that in mind, a customized Linux distro with a minimal kernel
config should be the base upon which the desktop interface (written
in Tauri) would launch. The boot process overview is thus:
1. Initial Boot: Fast Linux kernel boot (optimized to <3 seconds)
2. Minimal Init: Loads only essential services
3. Display Server: Lightweight Wayland compositor starts
4. Application Launch: Your Tauri application
launches automatically
5. Complete Environment: User sees and interacts with the
Neo interface
The trick is making this process invisible to the user and this
should be doable via extensive tweaking of the boot process.
Alpine[6], Void[7], and Debian Minimal are the Linux distros Claude
recommended for testing.
As for hardware, my only requirement is that the OS is able to run on
the most capable Raspberry Pi 5[8]. It supports PCI express (which
means you can attach super‑fast SSDs to it) and the best
configuration comes with 16GB RAM. Good enough, I think? I grew up
with less in the early 2000s!
So cool, you can run this on a RasPi. As I sit in front of a Mac
Studio and Apple Display, I cannot help but imagine this Neo Jonathan
sitting on my desk. A few NAS drives, two or three operating systems
to swap between, a cellular modem? Floppy/MiniDisc drives? Idk, what
else would you snap into your deck? Your own LLM, perhaps?
Framework Computer[9] proves that having an open platform is not only
possible, it’s profitable. System76[10] sells hardware and maintains
Pop!_OS[11]. In a world of services and apparent obsession with
"customer sat" (hi, Tim Apple), the actual quality of what we’re
given is hella lacking.
I’d love to end this "Spitball with Claude" with an announcment like,
"Good news! This idea has been funded by Sequoia, Paradigm, and angel
investors who believe in a better computing future, blah blah." Sorry
to disappoint you, I didn’t graduate from Stanford, I know no one in
Y Combinator, and I don’t play golf or whatever tech CEOs do
these days.
I am powered by delulu and a tireless LLM that validates my
wild ideas.
🕸️
2025.04.17 EDIT: Someone DM’d me about an issue the Vivaldi browser
has with my homepage and ended it with a request to not use our convo
within an LLM, based on my enthusiasm in this blog post and I gotta
ask…WTF do y’all be on? I understand the inherent distrust around the
training of LLMs but why would I use my online communications
VERBATIM as training fodder? I need y’all to relax and take off the
tinfoil hat to let your brain breathe. Good grief.