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#linux#don#money#omarchy#dhh#desktop#more#developers#laptop#open
Discussion (90 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
On the one hand, I'm supportive of people trying to make Linux on the desktop happen. On the other hand, a distribution aimed squarely and solely at developers doesn't seem like it's faithfully achieving that goal whatsoever, given that developers are the one group of people today that don't generally have a problem running Linux on the desktop. I would be far more excited to see this kind of money being poured into building a desktop for everyone else.
I am a developer; and I do have a problem: I don't have a choice of good laptops that are guaranteed to work with linux, and preferably come with linux preinstalled. I can go buy a macbook, or a windows laptop; but I can't walk into a store and buy a linux laptop.
The sibling comment that suggests framework is much stronger in this respect, and it's a name brand which might actually get the buyers at large stores to take some notice.
Here's hoping.
My understanding is that System76 is also a rebranded Chinese/Taiwanese OEM.
For example, there is a bug in the logitech mouse driver (combined with a specific AMD USB chipset) that occasionally does not restart properly after suspend. Coding agent fixed it (two lines of code) with a kernel module that automatically rebuilds after kernel upgrades.
Another example was I was getting hard crashes, because by default swap on fedora was in memory (IIRC, or it could have been me doing it wrong), so when there was a lot of memory pressure on my system from running larger LLMs it'd OOM and go down. This would have been painful to debug normally, but in <2mins a coding agent can read the kernel logs and fix it.
I also had it set GNOME up the way I like it, which would have taken hours manually, because I don't know what I'm searching for extension wise.
There's many other examples of just slightly broken stuff that coding agents can fix that was a total pain before and I just didn't have the patience to fix them manually.
Omarchy is integrating agents much more closely with the UI.
This is on a laptop whose manufacturer claims I am running a an officially supported OS.
I'll be a lot more likely to convince my family to switch to Linux if I could trust it for myself.
This is really weird. Did you try to run the latest kernel?
I have nothing but praise for what Framework did with 13 Pro at least, it was the only Linux laptop that I ever had that everything really just works(TM). Even my ThinkPad that had really good support for Linux still had some weirdness that I need to patch manually (the microphone indicator led stays on even if the microphone was turned off).
it's good for linux if there is more activity on that front
there is a reason why ubuntu and fedora became so popular
Somewhere in the demo of it (its a long demo but there's a lot to unpack), DHH creates a theme from an image, it picks thematic colors from the image and changes the entire UI theme. It looks beautiful, which is not something I could have said in the last 20 years of looking at Linux UIs. They mostly all have just copied Windows or Mac UI elements and call it a day.
I'd like to see where this goes, having a large foundation funding efforts could really make this a viable alternative to a large chunk of personal computer users. My understanding is the funding is mostly going to fund open source contributors to go "full time" and/or get paid for their contributions.
Well, is it any wonder that distributions like CachyOS or Omarchy, that appeal to normal people over gatekeeping forum trolls, are popping off? A year ago I hadn't heard of either, but apparently they are quite popular with the kids these days.
Linux mint, Fedora, Ubuntu, and many others are very straightforward in their installation process. And a lot of tools has been added to decrease the reliance on cli tools. It’s not the 90s anymore.
And yet majority of developers use either corporate mandated Windows or Macs.
For the uninformed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454026
That being said I’m a bit concerned about videos like this https://xcancel.com/thestanduppod/status/2091511392717213707 (really hope this is AI generated) and that so many people are okay to give money to David’s project despite his commentary on various societal topics.
I like many of David’s technical ideas, especially back when I did Ruby, but I’m sad he’s decided to spend time and energy on certain topics. Tech needs more kindness, not less.
David said he wants an open group no one cares about politics or whatever you support, you are welcome to join.
Seems pretty inclusive?
And since this is such a predictable thing, it's very likely done intentionally.
The idea is you claim to be open to everyone. This includes people who are judged to be undesirable elsewhere. In fact, you make sure those people want to join by specifically targeting and vilifying specific organization (in this case, you could say Nix or whoever he is talking about). So, by design, you don't create a mixed community, but one with the specific population that feels rejected by whatever or whoever you are targeting/opposing. Because of this concentration of a specific population, member of the organization you are targeting will not be welcomed (which mean it is not truly open). They are on paper, but nobody wants to be part of a community made in majority by people who dislike you. Now, all this can be used actually for good, for example to create community for the oppressed marginalized or whatever. But it can also very easily be turned into a fascist utopia. It alls come to how you set the rules and how you enforce them within the community, and also simply the people that you are trying to group up. Trying to create a community for disabled people to push for more accessibility within free-software is laudable. Trying to group up people who thinks X or Y are 'clown' usually only lead to the creation of negativity-focused/ego-driven communities.
EDIT: Also, and this is more my (very subjective) opinion, but people who are fronting 'no-politics', 'openness' with no clear claim that whoever they are pointing to are not open, and typically talk about free-speech (not the case here), are typically PoS with big egos who got rejected from the main communities for being PoS and now want to create their own PoS community. See also twitter
EDIT2: Actually, an easy example of this is with reddit. There is often subreddit that I created in reaction of moderation and people being ban from main subreddit X or Y. If you go and look at those communities, they are usually not of very high quality, even more trigger happy on the ban hammer, and have a single focus on what got them ban from the main subreddit in the first place. A very easy example is r/europe vs r/europe_sub. The latter being extremely, if not entirely focused on immigration and being borderline or openly racist.
- https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
- https://world.hey.com/dhh/wolves-sheep-and-gypsies-ba44af6a
and a arch linux reskin with a tiling window manager + his companies apps pre-installed is the way to do that?
Bit weird, but I support anything that lessens Microsoft domination. Especially with Apple losing their way.
I'd think so, given the same opinions when applied to a programming framework have generated hundreds of billions of enterprise value in the past.
And the opinionated aspect is also a positive since there's often decision paralysis for many people new to Linux.
The laptop came with Windows 11, which I needed for one specific task I’ve been putting off for months. I failed to complete it for reasons unknown, but it did give me enough time in Windows that I was worried about the hardware. The trackpad was horrible. Coming from 20+ years on the Mac, I was used to all non-Apple trackpads being pretty bad, but it I was debating returning the laptop. It would take me 5 attempts just to launch an exe. Taps wouldn’t register, timing was off and it would edit the file name when I tried to double click, it was a mess.
Once in Omarchy, this issue went away. The trackbad works fine, scrolling is smooth, even more smooth than my MBP. The json config to enable things like natural scrolling (which I’m used to from the Mac) is something I don’t think the average user would do. Disabling tap to click had me asking AI, and then I still had to realize for format it gave me was wrong, so that isn’t too user friendly.
I was a bit worried about trying it with how much vibe coding DHH does, but so far it’s been one of the best Linux experiences I had, and made the laptop dramatically better. I still haven’t really figured out the integrated AI stuff, but spent most of the day without even installing it. I don’t have any experience outside of GirHub Copilot in VS Code at work. I tried installing LM Studio and using OpenCode to connect to a model running there. I’m not really sure what the workflow is supposed to be. I just don’t want to need a $40 Claude subscription to try this idea of an agentic OS. I don’t know that I even like that idea, but figured if I was going to stop being a hater and actually try it, this would be the scenario that would make sense… on a laptop with none of my actual data or accounts.
Meanwhile this particular thing now that the shell frameworks are converging into QuickShell and others are barely worth mentioning.
I'm not even going to criticize DHH for getting that money, good for him. My critique is solely directed at the rest of the VC ecosystem. Meanwhile China has a highly competitive ecosystem for hard tech graduates.
He's not getting that money, he literally donated 10% of that money himself
It's a linux distribution focused on a specific type of user (a software developer) that drops the Linux-typical approach to UX of "doesn't matter, all linux users and devs are hackers that will configure and install everything they need".
That's...just not true? Most of us like MacOS because we don't want to.
It comes with sensible configuration, an AI-centric approach (documentation for the LLM to customize the system is included in the OS) instead of AI-negationism, and bundles all sensible software a development machine should have.
It always felt like all Linux distributions were mostly focused on the conventions and politics instead of the final assembled product itself. So you get a great OS, but with everything left to the user when it comes to UX.
I think DHH will succeed here because he's the right person for it: opinionated, well networked, has a following, capable.
I don't personally love him but he brings what most distro maintainers don't: product vision and a taste on how a development machine should work.
I don't use omarchy, just debian, ubuntu, arch, depending on the need and they basically all come with "documentation for the LLM to customize the system is included in the OS". There is the wiki, the man pages, the documented `.conf` files, ...
> It always felt like all Linux distributions were mostly focused on the conventions and politics instead of the final assembled product itself. So you get a great OS, but with everything left to the user when it comes to UX.
There was always distro that aim to be focus for user X or Y (see for example gaming focus distros), and most of them do indeed provide a better UX for X or Y. But “generic” distro don't have the luxury of targeting a specific use-case. They are the base with allow the customization in the first place.
I am sure Omarchy has a nice UX for a dev coming from another OS or from a default Ubuntu install, but customizing your Linux distro to fit your specific needs as always be the next step for whoever care enough. A lot of people don't care enough and will be fine with a default ubuntu, fedora, omarchy, ... But somehow, I feel that if you care enough to install omarchy, you will care enough to go and dig deeper, questioning a 10M funding. But whatever, it's basically rich people making a rich people gift to their rich friend.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_bro
> Beautiful, Modern & Opinionated Linux by DHH
That’s really a lot of money to raise for a Linux distribution. And with investors^Wpatrons such as Lütke and Dorsey, and DHH at the head it’s for sure something I wouldn‘t touch with a 10km long pole
But i would go not for absolute amount of tax paid, but for relative tax paid with some floors and ceilings. pay effective rate of 30% (or less) income, get one vote. Pay 50% or less, get two, pay above 50% get three.
Pay less than 10% - no vote for you !!!