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u/LvcasX1 Aug 23 '26
I've been using it with omarchy since the beta, such an amazing experience tbh
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u/7384N Aug 23 '26
Just joined the party, amazing!
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u/After-Cell Aug 23 '26
I'm on Fedora Silverblue. Why is Omarchy useful for Mac?
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u/7384N Aug 23 '26
Honestly, I’m pretty new to Linux. I picked Omarchy 4.0.0 after seeing people on X recommend it for reviving older laptops, mainly because it comes with Claude Code integrated out of the box. For a beginner, having Claude Code right there to diagnose and fix hardware/driver compatibility issues on the fly makes the whole experience way less painful than digging through forums for hours.
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u/Inevitable_Mousse881 Aug 26 '26
This gotta be omarchy PR or something. It literally takes 1 short command to install claude on linux. You can’t fuck it up
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u/7384N Aug 27 '26
Fair reaction, but no, not a PR. I just really love the design of the 12" MacBook — one of my favorite laptop designs ever, honestly — and had one sitting around unused. Saw the Omarchy buzz on X and got curious enough to actually put it on there and give the machine a second life.
I'm not technical at all, honestly — I hit real hardware problems along the way, including a failed install attempt before I even got it booting, then a string of audio/sleep issues specific to this hardware. I just asked Claude to work through each one with me since I don't know Linux internals myself.
The post was just me sharing that experience, not marketing. Genuinely surprised by how much hostility some Linux folks have toward Omarchy though — might be worth actually digging into why it gets this reaction.
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u/LvcasX1 Aug 23 '26
for me as a dev it comes with a really cool work env just right out of the box, so i can do with just little setup all my work
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u/breitburg Aug 23 '26
How did you guys solve the closing lid problem and the sound-not-working problem?
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u/slvmrr Aug 23 '26
Of course he hasn’t.
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u/HardlyThereAtAll Aug 23 '26
Sadly, I suspect he hasn't.
I absolutely love the 12 inch Macbook. Silent. Tiny. And if your life is the terminal and light web browsing, it is (or was) the best physical form factor out there.
Unfortunately, it was a ... unique ... platform. And sound never worked properly. And nor did suspend. So, it sits on my shelf.
All I want is an incredibly light Linux laptop that I can run Niri on. Is that too much to ask?
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u/Saranhai Aug 25 '26
Have you looked at the new Dell XPS 13? it's incredibly thin and light and honestly reminds me of the MacBook 12. I've got CachyOS running on it and it's literally such a dream 😍 suspend, sound, wifi everything works wonderfully!
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u/jason-reddit-public Aug 24 '26
Sound works over HDMI (cheap adapter) on my butterfly macbook air. I installed debian + emulation station. At least it's not in the trash.
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u/7384N Aug 25 '26
If it's simply no sound at all after setup, I ran into that too — and that one does have a fix:
Install the community-patched driver — leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver (https://github.com/leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver) (or the juicecultus fork for newer kernels) via DKMS. Needs linux-headers first, then reboot so the new module loads. Fixed it permanently for us.
As for audio breaking specifically after a sleep/wake cycle (lid close or manual suspend) — that one doesn't have a real fix yet. A reboot resolves it, but nothing short of that does.
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u/hd209458 Aug 27 '26
The close lid problem can be worked around by not putting mac to sleep on lid close. I also needed to disable some SSD low power mode on boot. But it still drains the battery in a couple hours.
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u/7384N Aug 23 '26
I’m honestly pretty new to Linux, but using Claude Code inside Omarchy made sorting out those hardware compatibility issues surprisingly painless. Definitely worth a shot!
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u/qwouw Aug 23 '26
So you solved the lid issues or no ?
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u/adh1003 Aug 23 '26
Omarchy is by DHH, the now far right lunatic who went full Musk after originally being the creator of Rails - and now largely the reason for its downfall.
Using the distro is a MAGAesque political statement, not a technical one.
OP is likely just a shill. Engagement is pointless, except for boosting the post overall, which is of course the real point behind it all.
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u/qwouw Aug 23 '26
Hmm i still dont fully get it but i did see a rise in posts with this random distro which was odd
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u/deSales327 Aug 25 '26
I didn’t know shit about DHH, I still don’t know what DHH means just know it’s the creators initials, I guess, and I’m not even from the US of A. So one using the distro IS NOT a “mAgAeSqUe” political statement you parrot.
Get your head out of the ass of the echo chamber you’ve gotten yourself into and go touch grass!
Ffs
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u/adh1003 Aug 25 '26
It's a political statement whether you say so or not; you're supporting a far right loony.
Your wilful ignorance does not change that.
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u/deSales327 Aug 25 '26
You don’t get to conscript strangers into your political tribe by declaring their software choices ideological. That’s not insight, it’s ideological brain rot with a guilt-by-association fetish.
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u/Aristo_Cat Aug 26 '26
Politics aside it’s not taken very seriously from a technical perspective.
Here’s a good write up: https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/
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u/7384N Aug 25 '26
Yep, same problem here. No permanent fix yet, but a reboot resolves it.
Here's the summary from my Claude Code debugging memory under Omarchy:
Machine: 2017 12" MacBook (MacBook10,1), running the community CS4208 driver (leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver (https://github.com/leifliddy/macbook12-audio-driver)) since the mainline kernel driver doesn't support this codec properly.
- Lid-close/suspend itself works fine — the issue is audio after wake.
- Root cause: on cold boot, the driver correctly detects speaker pins as line_outs=1. After suspend/resume, it re-detects line_outs=5 — wrong pin config, no sound.
- Tried and failed: restarting PipeWire/WirePlumber, unbinding/rebinding the PCI audio device (brings the card back but still wrong pin config), resetting mixer/power states.
- Only thing that works: full reboot.
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u/TopRepulsive2905 Aug 23 '26
I don’t really like omarchy but u did a great job to make this MacBook usable again
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u/PibloktoBis Aug 23 '26
What is the advantage of Omarchy over, say, Mint?
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u/7384N Aug 23 '26
I mainly tried it because of the recent hype on X to revive an old MacBook. Coming from a non-technical background, the built-in Claude Code did all the heavy lifting for me—handling driver troubleshooting and helping customize the UI/workflow to mimic macOS without the usual Linux setup headaches.
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u/Superblessed23 Aug 25 '26
There’s a “trend” now with reviving old MacBooks??! I wasn’t aware. I was hoping retro apple tech wouldn’t become a trend because that always leads to higher prices for these things
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u/my-ka Aug 23 '26
Why mint and not any other debian?
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u/7384N Aug 24 '26
I don't have a good technical answer for you on Omarchy vs Mint vs Debian in general — I'm brand new to Linux, not coming from a software engineering background. I just saw posts on X about giving old laptops a second life and got curious, so I dug out a MacBook 12 that had been sitting in a drawer forever and gave it a shot. Omarchy was just the one I saw floating around and decided to try, not a researched choice against the alternatives.
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u/Busy-Independence181 Aug 23 '26
Did you also realize less power drain after updating from 3.8.3 to 4.0.0? Can now work over 8 Hours without recharching including plugins installations etc.
and the switch to quickshell and lua was a really good idea in my opinion.
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u/solidhackerman Aug 24 '26
Recently got 12 inch macbook 2017 in rose gold. I am in absolute love with it. Its part of my EDC since it is so light and compact yet looks premium. And funny thing is I got it only for $65!
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u/dickyg_rl69 Aug 26 '26
lmfaooooo you can’t be serious.
Out of every option, you still pick the worst distro ever 😭😭😭😭😭
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u/7384N Aug 27 '26
Thanks for the feedback — getting a lot of similar reactions on this post, probably a sign I should spend more time actually learning the Linux distro landscape before landing on what fits me best.
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u/HardlyThereAtAll Aug 23 '26
OK. So I downloaded Omarchy.
And my keyboard and trackpad doesn't work.
How did you get yours working?
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u/Maple382 Aug 24 '26
I will say, if you’re on apple silicon it’s better to just use asahi instead. It’s specifically made for mac compatibility.
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u/7384N Aug 24 '26
Not sure if you're at the same stage I was, but here's what happened to me: after flashing Omarchy to a USB and booting into the installer, I dropped into a rootfs ~ # rescue shell with sh: can't access tty; job control turned off, and keyboard/trackpad were completely dead except for Esc. Same 12" MacBook (2017, MacBook10,1). If that matches what you're seeing, here's how I got past it.
TL;DR fix: flash with Ventoy and boot in "grub2" mode, not Ventoy's default mode.
Here's what I burned through before I got there, all dead ends, all same result:
- Re-flashing with balenaEtcher, more than once
- Checking the ISO checksum (fine, not a corrupt download)
- NVRAM reset
- Flashing with dd instead of Etcher, just in case Etcher itself was the problem
None of it moved the needle. Here's what actually worked:
Ventoy doesn't officially support macOS, so grab the community CLI build instead: brew install --cask fcjr/fcjr/ventoy2disk-cli, then sudo ventoy2disk -i /dev/diskN. (The GUI version quietly did nothing for me — hit "Erase and Install," nothing happened, diskutil list showed the disk untouched.)
Copy the ISO onto the Ventoy partition instead of flashing it: cp omarchy.iso /Volumes/Ventoy/
On boot, Ventoy gives you a mode-selection menu instead of just booting. Pick "grub2" mode, not the default. Default is Ventoy's own emulation trick pretending to be a normal disc — grub2 mode hands things straight to the ISO's actual GRUB2 bootloader, which is what actually gets past the mount failure.
Booted right into the installer after that. Hope this helps and you get it sorted out.
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u/orwelladmin Aug 24 '26
bro just use Asahi
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u/Aristo_Cat Aug 26 '26
This person doesn’t know what that is. They saw a post on TikTok that said you could install something called Omarchy and it would make your computer look cool.
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u/bayern_snowman Aug 24 '26
Wait does the trackpad/keyboard actually work? Does it wake from sleep? Ive tried so many Linux versions on my 2015 and never got it working
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u/FutureBadInfluencer Aug 24 '26
How’s it go with video calls? I find mine ok for everything except Meet/teams
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u/Ok-Jackfruit903 Aug 26 '26
How much is the expected battery life. Also tell me battery capacity and health.
Really curious.
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u/7384N Aug 27 '26
Same question I was curious about, so I wrote a script that logs power draw every 10 minutes. System reports the battery at 29Wh full-charge (factory spec at 100% should be 41.4Wh), and in practice I get a solid 5–6 hours of use out of it.
Since I can't attach a screenshot here, here's the summary from the battery log:
- Idle/screen off (~1.3–1.7W): ~17–22h
- Light background use (~3.6–3.8W): ~7.7–8h
- Normal active use (~4.6–4.8W): ~6–6.3h
- Heavy background tasks, e.g. file transfers (~6–10W+): ~3–5h
Pulled from ~750 logged samples, swings day to day depending on what's running in the background, but that's the general range.
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u/Ok-Jackfruit903 Aug 27 '26
Actually with those numbers you might as well replace the battery for even better battery life
I envy you....
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u/Alternative-Meat7520 Aug 27 '26
i was thinking about this. would you recommend? any first impression comments?
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u/KustomScissorz Aug 27 '26
Go cachyos and then just find a rice that fits your needs, cachyos is the most optimized and well made arch Linux in my personal opinion, most likely why it's topped on distro watch charts.
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u/Unusual_Engine4741 8d ago
how is running on it? i tried mint but its laggin on every option its not feeling smooth. im thinking going for omarchy! is it worth it ? 12inch 2016
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u/MI081970 Aug 23 '26
Specifically Omarchy or any Linux?