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Comment by thehamkercat | Hacker News Reader

I think people shouldn't just jump to distros which are getting heavily hyped in media/Youtube, cachyOS had similar wave, and now Omarchy does.

(example: NetworkChuck, Primeagen? and a few others)

also, archlinux is much easier to install nowadays with archinstall [1], so i'm not sure you really need another opinionated layer on top of it

[1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

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I think this is more about the UI, rather than the install. I haven't tried it myself though.

I think nowadays using quickshell anyone who is so inclined can vibecode their own UI though. I recently made the switch to Wayland/hyprland and rebuilt my polybar on quickshell, even adding widgets that allow getting system info/fine grained system control (interactive Bluetooth, WiFi, Volume, Brightness etc).

Ah yes, the solution to software with massive security holes is for everyone to vibe code their own software with massive security holes.

But in all seriousness, I am running omarchy now, and I will almost definitely be switching to arch at some point in the future.

Even if you introduce bugs in your UI (which I think is not very likely if you have a basic understanding of your system), the chance that someone would exploit software that literally only runs on your own machine seems extremely unlikely to me.

I've been using arch for over 10 years btw.

Isn't the other half of AI that we can afford to look for exploits in one-off software?

The old human nature tendency of "Just ship it!" and the desire to move on to the next shiny thing on our wishlist doesn't go away with AI. If it anything, it makes it worse.

I am not sure how someone would run an LLM on my computer to look for exploits as the source code is only available on my machine?

Yeah, I could literally open up a port on my computer which executes everything sent to it. As a bespoke app, it's pretty unlikely that it would ever be exploited even though it's ridiculously dangerous.

To be at risk, you'd first need to publish your application. The attacker would separately have to figure out how to identify and access your computer for attack.

The problem is not the hype, the problem is that it's a vibe coded distro. AI lowers the bar substantially in terms of needed competence and diligence to create something like this. Of course bugs and issues are present in human created software as well, but now that everyone can vibe code a distro the chances of low quality software are much greater.

Add that annoying theo guy to that list. Cant stand these people, they confidently push out videos like they're experts, a week later it turns out whatever they were talking about was total crap and they've already abandoned it - case in point OpenClaw. Look at the mess of videos those named above put out about it, not a single one uses it anymore.

There is only so much a human can master in his lifetime. And if you choose to master the art of video production, then you are probably not spending that much time on mastering the thing you yap about on camera…

which is why you have to hire people who master the art of yap whatever on camera, so the video production guy can have something to work on.

or did you think onlyfans?

> if you choose to master the art of video production, then you are probably not spending that much time on mastering the thing

What?

Its perfectly possible to master two things. Video production isnt _that_ hard. Especially as lighting, shooting adding graphics and editing film is much much easier than 10 years ago.

I was watching one guy explaining the xv6 code and it was pretty much one shot with a single camera pointing at the listing on paper. Not sure if you need professional video if you want to really expound on something.

That is also a strong point. fancy visuals are nice, but if you can't explain, then there is little point

mind you it also feeds into LLM output. Confident bullshit is better than "I dunno"

Counter example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Laurie

Musician, singer, novelist, comedian, actor, producer

as primarily influencers they make money from your attention, not from promoting or making good software.

Not a single mention of Pirate Software yet?

Am I missing something? What does pirating software has to do with that thread?

You are not missing anything for not knowing but Pirate Software in this context is another youtuber/influencer.

Sadly, true. I know a person who gets AI news from that YouTuber and quotes him like he’s a household name and pays him for some repackaged chat models. It’s tedious and hard to talk to them about basic/remedial aspects because their education from YouTube is half-heard and superficial. I’m trying to get him to invest the time in hands-on experience and then we can talk about that. When you’re deep into these channels, you’re not gaining experience and you can’t easily start until you pull away.

> they confidently push out videos like they're experts, a week later it turns out whatever they were talking about was total crap

100%! When the US attacked Iran, they became experts on wars; when Iran closed the strait, they turned experts on foreign policy, diplomacy, and negotiation; they were doctors during COVID; now they are SME in flooding and disaster control after the Nepal incident.

It’s sad, but a lot of software folks have decided to become influencers and not pursue expertise. I remember before you’d mostly be reading boring looking blogs to follow experts in the industry. It seems like the mindshare has moved to flashy videos by people that aren’t experts, but are great at communication. Similar to how if you want to watch some diy video on YouTube, you’ll get much better information from a poorly produced snd edited video from someone that knows what they’re talking about vs a well produced and edited video from someone that has no idea what they’re talking about.

I don't think I've ever actually seen a theo video, but I stumbled across this and think I've seen all I need to know. 3:45 even references your criticism.

Average Theo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1p9zdUtUdo

Just use Fedora. It just werks (most times).

I like the very non-windows very non-mac ui of omarchy.

UI is desktop environment and (usually) ports to large-use distros cleanly.

- JaKooLit’s Fedora-Hyprland Repository: https://github.com/JaKooLit/Fedora-Hyprland. The most popular automated setup guide and installer for Fedora, bundling Hyprland alongside pre-configured bars, launchers, and

- Official Hyprland Wiki: wiki.hypr.land/Getting-Started/Installation/. The main reference guide for core configuration options, environment variables, and Wayland portal requirements.

- Solopasha Fedora COPR copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/solopasha/hyprland. The primary community repository hosting cutting-edge builds of Hyprland and its ecosystem packages for

- Fedora Discussion Tutorials: discussion.fedoraproject.org. Community walkthroughs covering minimal netinstall setups and distro-specific Wayland troubleshooting.

I run Niri and Dank Material Sell on Fedora. It’s perfect, and better than Omarchy from what I’ve seen. I much prefer scrolling window managers to tilers.

Yup. I've been on zirconium (https://github.com/zirconium-dev/zirconium) for a while, and it's great. Fedora atomic/bootc under the hood with Niri+DMS. Basically bombproof.

Fedora (or debian, or archlinux or whatever distro you choose) doesn't force you into an UI. All of them have minimal, server and/or "flavored" versions and you can always uninstall and install whatever you want.

So you need a new theme, and not a new OS :-)

is there a fedora 44 ws with non free package built in ?

You still have to use rpmfusion, which isn’t a huge deal. It’s maybe 5 min one time and then you are set.

Or you could use one of the Universal Blue spins. Bluefin and Aurora have non-free stuff built in and you can install pretty much any package from anywhere.

oh thanks a ton

Fedora is an arse to use. most of the distros for non free software are targeted at stable RHEL, so are miles out of date.

You only get 6 months of updates, at which point everything break subtly, or not if you use nvidia.

ubuntu with a custom GUI is the way forward, at least compared to fedora.

Counterpoint: I've had very few (and always minor) problems upgrading between major Fedora releases over the years with no more effort than following the well-documented steps to do so, including both traditional and atomic variants, the latter with a wide variety of layered packages as specifically not recommended due to potential problems when upgrading.

And on the server side of things, I ran a Fedora CoreOS VM with a Pihole container that silently and successfully auto-updated both the OS and the service container for years with no intervention on my part.

I had to support fedora on desktop and laptop for a large company.

Worse, it wasn't my job to support those machines, its just my department needed cuda and I was the slowest person to run away when they called for help.

Everything hyped is usually a counter quality signal

I disagree. I think it's more that most things aren't high quality, and hype doesn't reliably select for things that are.

I had just enough issues with archinstall the last time I tried it that I went back to EndeavourOS which essentially gets you a GUI installer and some pre-installed utilities on the stock Arch install. The only significant change I'm aware of is that they use dracut instead of mkinitcpio.

It's fine if they want to jump on fad distros. After all, Linux is a hobby OS, it's not for serious work.

yea... Not like most of the worlds compute runs on linux.

OP here, I couldn't agree more.

i think cachyos actually does interesting things, but i still would never recommend an arch based distro to anyone

I think you are probably missing critical point that for someone omarchy is not about “bare arch”

UI is crucial. If people want something easy to use out of the box without spending days to configuring it

I think I get your point as omarchy represents a different kind of UI, but if it was just about getting a rock solid stable working environment, Fedora or Ubuntu with either Gnome and KDE work perfectly fine. I don't even use a third party terminal (just konsole). Keyboard driven terminal workflows works fine on KDE for me.

Omarchy seems to be pentested by a bunch of angry haters. Who's pentesting your arch install? :P

Basic docker users are the same as angry haters I guess.

That's not what I claimed or said, do read my posts please and project less :)

No harm, no foul izacus. I am laughing inside because I'm included in the "angry" group by default (I hate all Linux distros, less than Windows or MacOS) and I'm often a basic docker user but got over major DE customization like Omarchy when I needed to get thing done at a higher rate (back then the coolness was crunchbang).

Omarchy imo is best for agent maxxing Mac power users who aren't locked into Apples proprietary apps like Final Cut, audio production software or Adobe and Affinity, so maybe not so great for designers and photographers as the main system.

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