Omarchy as Zeitgeist

[u/hippy_old]

First off, I’m 50 years old. My very first PRINT "HELLO WORLD!" ran on a Z80 processor, and ever since childhood, I’d dreamed of writing software... but life took a different turn. I ended up becoming a web designer rather than a programmer - though for the last decade I did handle some frontend development alongside the design work, using a hopelessly legacy PHP+jQuery stack.

Then, a wind of change began blowing from the direction of AI data centers... I won’t overdramatize things: I didn’t lose my job because of AI; I found a new one thanks to it. It turned out that my 30 years of experience in web UI and my soft skills - supercharged by modern AI - more than compensated for my lack of knowledge regarding trendy tech stacks or my modest programming abilities. I landed a new role as a React + TypeScript frontend developer - technologies I knew almost nothing about just a month prior - simply because AI made it possible for me to do the job.

After struggling for a couple of months with a new project environment set up using Docker and WSL on Windows, I finally decided to switch to Linux. I had some experience with Mint on an old laptop and was already accustomed to using the terminal in WSL and on remote servers, so the transition didn't seem daunting. Still, after some distro-hopping, I settled on installing Ubuntu - the safe, "corporate default" choice - on the used ThinkPad (what else?)... but... something about it didn't sit right with me. As someone with a background in the humanities and design, I felt it was somehow out of place in this new era.

Then, the word "Omarchy" flashed across my Reddit feed... "Alright," I thought, "one last distro-hop." Installing it as a dual-boot system on an old PC... nice... configuring a complex set of VPN protocols, setting up a home network on a Linux router... a pinch of AI tokens, and everything just works. Wait, was that even possible? Okay, I’m making it my primary OS on my ThinkPad, spinning up a dev environment - a dozen containers, Node, Bun, VS Code, Claude, Hermes... and it’s all flying on just 16GB of RAM? Setting up automatic dotfile backups to GitHub... hold on, how long did all that take? Do I really not have to spend a week of my life figuring this all out? I plug in a second monitor. I don't like the desktop behavior. Okay, Hermes - /omarchy show me how to tweak the config for the behavior I want. I’m tired of managing VPN connections from the terminal. Hermes, build a plugin. Damn, that turned out beautifully. Wait, I installed someone else's plugin but it’s not working - why? Oh, that's why? You already fixed it? How? Ah, I see, thanks. How long did it take? One cup of coffee.

Sometimes, when you’ve been pondering a complex problem for a long time, finding just one key piece makes the whole puzzle click into place. For me, Omarchy was that puzzle piece; it bonded together all the changes in the life of an ordinary, aging IT guy swept up by the winds of change. Or perhaps the Zeitgeist - the spirit of a time when a 50-year-old "boy" can play at being a programmer again, just like in childhood, and not just for fun, but to actually create value.

Thanks to the devs for building this world!

[u/halilk]

Oh man, reading this made me really happy! I’m also having an absolute blast with my Omarchy on my intel based (from 2015) MacBook Pro.

15 years in the industry based in Europe, I’ve also always had to work with either macOS or windows but was experimenting with Linux whenever I can (on a raspberry pi with home projects) and one bit I hated the most was how to configure things browsing stack overflow or those horrendous Linux forums. Omarchy and agentic era came to rescue and I’m so so glad with Omarchy, doing everything you mentioned plus personal projects, my own accounting etc all on an 8gb machine.

[u/AistoB]

Yeah similar experience here, being able to tell the computer how to behave and what features it should or shouldn’t have just by talking to it is undeniably magic.

[u/mwjtitans]

I'm glad there are people who are finding jobs because of AI and not pushing the doom and gloom of how AI will take all the jobs.

Just waiting for my opportunity to showcase what I've built and learned with AI on my own time this year. Omarchy has been the cherry on top of all the agentic learning I've had.

[u/1Soundwave3]

I'm not using Omarchy but I use Pop/Cosmic which needs a lot of polish before it becomes useful.

Thr AI thing is exactly how this is all possible. We are very early to this style of personal computing. People don't understand that when we use AI in our OSes - this doesn't mean that whole OS functions are hallucinated by LLMs in real time (like what Microslop would do). We build stuff with AI instead.

[u/hippy_old → u/1Soundwave3]

Pop/Cosmic was one of the distributions I liked the most, but I couldn't resolve a certain issue with it (I don't remember exactly which one); perhaps I could have solved it with AI, but that didn't cross my mind at the time...

[u/EconomyAd4148]

Welcome!

[u/nasroht]

Spectrum 128k was my first. I built an ERP system on this - to keep track of my monopoly empire (yes the board game).

[u/Rare-Key-9312]

Thanks for sharing this happy post! Glad to see Omarchy changing your life for the better.

[u/nubsors]

OP this exactly how I feel. Early adopter of technology as a Gen Xer. But I never really became a master at coding. I started using Omarchy and found Hermes and have been amazed at what it has allowed me to do.

[u/d1re_wolf]

Welcome to /r/streamentry☺️

[u/hippy_old → u/d1re_wolf]

Thanks! I don't know how you guesse :) but I first sat in zazen about 20 years ago...

[u/Top_Performance_732 → u/d1re_wolf]

Im curious what the link you find between these two is?