Hello Linux, old friend

When i was 17 at high school, a classmate introduced me to Linux, this was 1998 so i think i used Red Hat. Getting it downloaded was a chore by itself over modems. I was a kid, i could learn Linux by breaking and fixing the OS over and over, i had nothing to do anyway. Working with a terminal it felt like I was in the (at that point recent) Hacker movie. I was already a nerd, but this thing gave me insane nerd creds. Too bad nerd creds did not do anything for my popularity in 1998.

Then came university, and i was amazed to find the laptops came with Windows, as well as most of the software, while the CS courses often supported using Linux, the expensive software packages the school provided were all Windows. So I mainly used Windows, my desktop was Linux for a long time but a dual boot for gaming purposes.

Working life was Windows again, although after a couple of years, when i co-founded Withlocals, i could pick a MacBook. For years my Mac felt like the perfect mix of a Unix machine and a commercial OS with support for professional tooling, and later I could even play most games.

But the last 2 years I’ve been finding myself frustrated with macOS more and more, the device is great, the best there is even, but the OS feels slow, bloated, stuck in the past. Every now and then i viewed demos of tiled window managers on Linux, and i felt the old Linux love grow.

This year it was time to buy a new laptop, AI needs more memory and my M1 is a 16 GB, no option to expand. But this might be the worst year ever to have to buy a laptop. For months now I’ve been searching, and doubting between options, stay on a Mac or go back to Linux. Expensive gamble to make given the prices this year.

But then I kept seeing videos about old ThinkPads, were these machines the answer i was looking for? At least it might be, it is a cheap gamble to make. So i took the plunge and bought a 150 euro T480, the best model to try according to Reddit.

Upgraded it to 64 GB DDR4 for 200 euro more, and installed Omarchy.

It took me half an hour or less to upgrade the memory, and the install took 5 minutes, including making the USB stick to install Omarchy. I have never gone from box to working setup in under an hour, and a keyboard based tiled window manager that looks as good as this thing… it’s like a dream come true.

With this OS and this machine, I feel like i’m Neo, or back in the 90s Hackers movie, this is the future i always hoped for. And the AI integration is nice, it can really modify the whole OS. It feels again like it felt in 1998, but now there is Herdr, and Pi and OMP and the Omarchy keybindings for everything feel just right. I can fully nerd out with this thing.

Although the red TrackPoint thing, I really hoped i would love it more, but i find myself not using it much. But it’s growing on me.