Show HN for February 16, 2026

Hey HN, I'm Tavi. I built this for my 4-year-old.

He and I used to "computer code" together in IPython: typing words to see emojis, mixing colors, making sounds. Eventually he wanted his own computer. So I took an old laptop and made him one.

That IPython session evolved into Explore mode, a REPL where kids type things and something always happens: "cat * 5" shows five cats, "red + blue" mixes colors like real paint, math gets dot visualizations. Then came Play mode (every key makes a sound and paints a color) and Doodle mode (write and paint). The whole machine boots straight into Purple. No desktop, no browser, no internet.

It felt different from "screen time." He'd use it for a while, then walk away on his own. No tantrum, no negotiation.

Some technical bits: it's a Python TUI (Textual in Alacritty) running on Ubuntu, so even very old laptops run it well. Keyboard input bypasses the terminal entirely via evdev for true key-down/key-up events, which lets me do sticky shift and double-tap capitals so kids don't have to hold two keys. Color mixing uses spectral reflectance curves so colors actually mix like paint (yellow + blue = green, not gray).

Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/purplecomputerorg/purplecomputer

I’m nervous, announcing this, as it isn’t ready to ship out to the general public yet, and I haven’t had any feedback at all from anyone, I’m out on my own here. I think this concept itself is kind of dismissed outright a lot too, and I understand why, I wouldn’t believe me either actually.

But, I do believe this is very much worth your time to check out, I am not aware of anything else very much like it.

I won’t repeat what is already written on the github README here, but some info:

I am a successful semi-retired solo game developer, I have been making my own bespoke game engines since 2003 for all of my games across a number of platforms and languages. Last year, I ripped out the engine of my latest game, and stripped it back with the goal to start a new project, as I have done a number of times before.

But this time, I decided to ditch lua and make my own programming language, and that was sort of the tipping point. Once I thought about multiplayer, and realized I wanted a general purpose network that didn't exist, I was on my way down this extremely deep rabbit hole.

I want to just make a few things clear, then I hope that some of you might have some questions or feedback.

- I'm disillusioned by capitalism and the AI transition, and that influences my motives

- I have made all of this open source and free not because I am overly altruistic, but because it is the only way something like this can succeed

- I don’t think it can or should replace the internet, I see it as a cycleway alternative to the internet highway, they have different purposes

- I have no real desire to run an open source project or lead anyone, I mostly just want software that works for me and my family and friends. I love coding and I like to make nice things and share them.

- There is still a lot to do, I'm very excited about messaging and the whole client-side data thing in particular, but for now there are only a few weeks of work to go until a bare bones browser will be functional enough to release and ship.

You can have a play and build it all yourself though right now, host sites, and build apps.