Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilalexander | Hacker News Reader

> audacious mission to make Linux on the desktop happen

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.

View on HN

I don't think that's true. I only finally switched to desktop linux when coding agents could fix the endless small problems I came across.

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.

Hm… Are meaningful numbers of non-developers aware of, let alone using coding agents yet, which could alleviate their pain points in using an “unknown” OS?

They shouldn't need to know. There could be a panel that allows you to ask for help and the "built in" agent fixes it for you in a friendly UI.

Omarchy is integrating agents much more closely with the UI.

oh yeah, OS-level AI integration is the missing piece. Just take a look at how well it's working for Windows.

> given that developers are the one group of people today that don't generally have a problem running Linux on the desktop.

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.

System76 is guaranteed to work, right? Also preinstalled if you like. Then there's also Tuxedo (which I understand are only rebranded chinese OEMs but still...)

I don't know any store that actually has system76 laptops, and even we take "online" as a store (I don't) - the laptops are unfortunately not competitive at all.

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.

Well, DHH managed to attract Dell, which are kinda sorta promising through a single representative that their new XPS laptops are fully tested with Omarchy:

https://www.youtube.com/live/Bic2KjFFj6w?si=g0wyGBQi63NmhWr5...

So that's encouraging. But still, I don't see any acknowledgement on the Dell site (apart from a single blog post) about their stance on supporting and testing linux on their laptops.

Dell have pre-installed & fully supported Ubuntu on a bunch of their Precision, XPS, and, more recently, Pro laptops for over a decade now.

Those supported models are always a good choice for running other Linux distros, too (I've run a vanilla Debian on 3 different models during that time without having the do anything special).

As I understand it, Omarchy isn't really doing any low-level development work - it's just an opinionated set of defaults & various non-free add-ons on top of Arch. Any laptop supported by Arch will work.

Here you can see which Laptops are "certified" for Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops

From my experience most of the support hinges on the WiFi chipset, so some Dells have great support while others have none.

They do ship a custom kernel specifically to improve XPS support.

> Then there's also Tuxedo (which I understand are only rebranded chinese OEMs but still...)

My understanding is that System76 is also a rebranded Chinese/Taiwanese OEM.

Do you disagree with including Dell due to hardware quality?

Framework?

Historically I'd agree, but I push back on this for two reasons:

1. AI Agents (which are at the center of Omarchy) arguably make just about anyone a "developer" in the conventional sense, and potentially more willing to use a dev-forward desktop 2. Converting the types of devs who've been stuck on MacOS for years because they're neurotic about UI/UX "polish" could be a great way to smooth out Linux's many rough edges

IMO the biggest hurdle with building "a Linux desktop for everyone else" is QA. Discovering and fixing the random little bugs that only surface from millions of slightly different hardware/software configurations is a massive undertaking that I'm not sure can be easily brute-forced.

Alternatively, I see a lot of value in building an exciting desktop that attracts a critical mass of folks who are comfortable diagnosing bugs, submitting clear diagnostic reports, or even fixing said bugs themselves, and willing to do that work (or delegate it to an AI agent) for free.

Even if Omarchy doesn't end up being the desktop "everyone else" actually uses, it could be a great first step towards building out the kind of community linux would need to ensure such a desktop meets the requisite user-friendliness standards.

I had to swap my Wi-Fi card and/or stop using the HDMI module in order to get my Framework 13 to stop locking up. I had to install an "obscure" app called `unpalm` to get my cursor to stop jumping random locations while typing. The fan randomly spins up to full speed which is ridiculously loud.

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.

> I had to swap my Wi-Fi card and/or stop using the HDMI module in order to get my Framework 13 to stop locking up.

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 easier to start with devs, if they can get it polished enough to become mainstream for developers, it will be much easier to polish it further so it becomes mainstream for more casual users.

there are plenty of devs that are on macOS because they prefer a 'just works' + good GUI combination

it's good for linux if there is more activity on that front

there is a reason why ubuntu and fedora became so popular

Developers en masse do not run Linux as a desktop, about 80% of developers run Windows or MacOS. Your average software developer isn't going to figure out what linux distro to use on desktop, then install and configure everything, its a decision making nightmare for most. I'm not stating that as some sort of derogatory comment, its just not going to happen, most users don't want to spend the time.

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.

These "it's just a shell script" comments show the exact problem with Linux attitudes. Some people seriously think it's some secret club where you're supposed to pain stakingly install Gentoo, configure a tiling window manager and figure out every glitch and nuance by yourself. And if you don't, you haven't earned it.

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.

> Some people seriously think it's some secret club where you're supposed to pain stakingly install Gentoo, configure a tiling window manager and figure out every glitch and nuance by yourself

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.

Yet we have a new generation of Linux users that don't care for any of those. Why is that? Maybe Linux Mint, Fedora and Ubuntu are missing something?

For what it's worth, one of the most popular mass market "GNU" Linux devices today is the Steam Deck. Defaulting to old school distros like Ubuntu is a very 2010 mindset.

> For what it's worth, one of the most popular mass market "GNU" Linux devices today is the Steam Deck

Then you might as well say that the most popular mass market FreeBSD device is the PlayStation. Factually true, but unrelated to the conversation.

> Yet we have a new generation of Linux users that don't care for any of those. Why is that? Maybe Linux Mint, Fedora and Ubuntu are missing something?

I don’t think they are as there’s nothing in Ormachy that isn’t readily available in normal distribution other than the “haxor” feeling. I use OpenBSD without any DE because I know all the CLI commands to make things happens, but I would be equally productive with using something like Elementary OS.

Ubuntu evolved a lot, it’s not an old school distribution in any way. Otherwise you would need to also remove arch, which steamOS and DHH‘s distros are relying upon

> developers are the one group of people today that don't generally have a problem running Linux on the desktop.

And yet majority of developers use either corporate mandated Windows or Macs.

Both are perfectly fine OS for the corporate world

Reply on news.ycombinator.com