All of the classice home computers had some sort of environment they booted into when there was no cart inserted. This system should as well. To me, it makes the most sense to have it boot to some sort of Python development environment. I could have it boot a C64 emulator and offer people a BASIC prompt, but that's not exactly practical these days. This system is based off of retro systems, but the goal is to make a modern version of those classics.

I started looking into different Python IDEs and found mu. It's pretty neat and looks like it might be perfect, except that I can't get it to install on either of my two linux laptops. I've had nothing but terrible luck with software on Linux lately, and it's geting very frustrating. I thought this might be as simple as installing a new program and seeing if I like it, but not so. This is the second program I've tried to work with tonight that just outright fails to install. 

I decided to do some testing with something I was fairly certain I could actually get to work: Thonny. I actually really like it, just based on the few minutes I spent with it. It's far more complex than the old BASIC prompts, but I didn't feel overwhelmed. One thing I'd love to do is create a custom color scheme for it for this project, and set up a bunch of defaults to make things easier. That reminds me that I need to create a manual for this computer as well. That is a massive project in itself, but one well worth completing. The old manuals were an important part of the home computer experience. The goal is to be able to provide everything needed to get started without internet or messing around. 

The next step in this part of the project is to get the Pi to boot straight to Thonny and lock out everything else so no one can break the OS. That's probably going to be far more difficult than it sounds. I'll start on that this week and see where I can get. 

It occurs to me that I'm still very much in the research phase, and it feels like I'm not making any progress here. The cure for that is to get some hardware ordered and start making development hardware. For now, I'll start doing all of my Python coding in Thonny to evaluate it as a default IDE.