I've been a Mac user for almost 20 years (my first MacBook was the 2007 matte black edition—the fingerprints!). I still love the Mac, but I'm becoming increasingly interested in Windows and Linux. Mostly I want a better grasp on how computers work and I need some new terrain to explore, but also because macOS has been on a steady decline in quality that's become impossible to ignore in day-to-day use.
So this week I bought a second SSD and installed Omarchy on my PC. This is my first time touching Linux as an OS for personal work and I want to capture my first impressions for posterity. Perhaps this will be useful for other Linux-curious minds out there, too.
- Omarchy feels thin. Yes, it comes prepackaged with a few standard apps and opinionated defaults, but on the whole, there’s not a lot going on. It has a terminal, a browser, some window management, basic settings and themes, and a great user manual. This feels fantastic. I love thin systems that I can build up instead of being served a bloated system that I have to trim down.
- Omarchy has almost everything I need for day to day work out of the box. I thought it would take a lot longer to start being productive, but it turns out a web browser, a terminal, and a password manager are all I really need to get going.
- This OS is fast. Like: oh shit, this is what a computer should feel like-fast. Windows open instantly. The OS feels responsive and sharp. I haven’t seen dropped frames once so far. When the keyboard is the primary input for the whole OS, performance isn’t optional because people type fast and expect things to happen instantly on the screen with each keypress. Even my beefed out M3 MacBook Pro feels slow by comparison. This might just be the classic “new computer illusion of speed” that fades over time, we’ll see.
- Claude Code is incredible for ramping up on Linux. When every setting is backed by a configuration text file, Claude can find anything, change anything, and teach me what it’s doing along the way.
- I’ve set up a Claude skill that tracks every time I make changes to configuration files, self documents the changes and includes rollback instructions in case I need to retrace my steps in the future.
- Using Claude feels a bit like cheating, since after all I wanted to use this moment to learn more about how computers work. My rationalization: I want to learn how computers work, but I don’t want to learn how to type the arcane syntax for every command along the way.
- One of my first aha moments with Omarchy was when I was able to find the configuration files for the system menus and adjust not only the items that appear, but also what they do under the hood (I added my own shortcut to the System menu for a faster Sleep command).
- A keyboard-first operating system is really hard to get my hands around. I’m moving about 50% of my normal speed (which might even be a generous estimate). The main stumbling blocks for me are window management (Hyprland) and memorizing a long list of new keymaps for doing basic tasks.
- I like that Omarchy treats web apps as first class citizens. They’re very easy to install (although icon detection should be built in…maybe my first project I can tinker with), and many modern websites are totally usable as PWAs. X, Gmail, YouTube, Notion…these are all totally fine running as web apps.
- I’m really missing the good macOS apps like Cleanshot and Raycast. I haven’t had enough time to dig into the Linux ecosystem yet, though.
- Omarchy really punishes you for using your mouse to do anything. This is fine, and one of the forcing functions I appreciate to become more keyboard proficient, but it definitely breaks my brain since there are very few clickable elements in the OS and most of them have keyboard focus indicators but not hover affordances.
- One interesting example: you don't need to click on a window to focus it. Convenient sometimes, but it means you can accidentally press a key while your mouse happens to be hovering over the wrong window and see the wrong thing happen. Omarchy does not want you touching the mouse!
- The ergonomics of the Super key is not good. To me it feels clearly in the wrong position on the keyboard, requiring awkward contortions with my pinky to do nearly anything. It’s the most important key on the keyboard, and it should be reachable by the thumb, that’s my take.
- I thought about remapping ctrl + super + alt into the familiar macOS layout with Super being closer to the spacebar. I’ve decided not to do this for now since I think it will give me headaches later as I’m learning how to use other apps.
- Skill issue? Yes.
- Luckily I have been programming for a while and keyboard-first navigation wasn’t totally foreign. I know how to quit Vim! This is not a bragging point. I’m mentioning it because I think if I didn’t have some base familiarity with keyboard shortcuts in a terminal-like environment Omarchy would have been much more challenging.
- LocalSend has been a lifesaver for easily porting files and clipboard text between my phone, Mac, and PC.
Overall: I’m having a lot of fun. I want to master Hyprland so I can fly through windows and keep things organized without thinking. I want to ramp up on Neovim both to try something new and to embrace the keyboard-first life that Omarchy is guiding me towards.
If you have tips for me, send me a message.