Don't sleep on Omarchy!
MMaximilian Schwarzmüller
Computing/SoftwareSmall Business/StartupsInternet Technology
Transcript
00:00:00last week with quite a bit of hype omachi version 4 omachi quattro launched and in case you missed
00:00:06it it's a linux distribution created by dhh who of course is definitely a controversial figure to
00:00:14many now i haven't used omachi this is not an omachi review or hype video i instead have thoughts
00:00:22about the direction we're heading to when it comes to software development and how we use computers
00:00:28and something i find super super exciting about omachi even though i haven't used it yet now of
00:00:33course it's also worth noting that besides all the hype we also have kind of the opposite reaction we
00:00:40have some linux diehards who rather keep the ecosystem locked down and who don't seem to
00:00:47believe that linux should be for everyone that you have to sweat blood and tears and fine-tune your
00:00:54distribution for months in order to be a valid linux user but of course that's just a loud minority we
00:01:01should ignore and i'm sure there are parts you can criticize about omachi parts that may feel vibe
00:01:08coded or maybe that it's essentially dhh's flavor of linux which it is it's marketed as that omachi the name
00:01:16comes from omakase which is this concept where the chef chooses what you eat and it's the same here for
00:01:24the operating system you can have controversies about all of that you can criticize all of that and again
00:01:30i have not used it yet but two important thoughts here for one i think it's just great if linux gets more
00:01:38approachable and usable and more importantly i'm convinced that the philosophy of omachi quattro
00:01:47specifically which is that it's mullable that you can easily add plugins and tweak every aspect of the
00:01:56operating system easily with help of ai that this is the way to go because that is frankly what you see
00:02:04in other parts of software development too i mean take something like the pi coding agent on which i have
00:02:11a course by the way if you want to learn all about it the idea behind this agent is that you can make
00:02:19it yours that it has a rich extensions system again about which i talk in my course which allows you to
00:02:26add any feature you want adjust the ui and really make it your coding agent or ai agent in general
00:02:34and i'm convinced we'll see much more of that in all areas in all kinds of software we interact with on
00:02:43the operating system is the perfect example for where you would want something like this in my opinion
00:02:51now it's also the perfect example where you can mess up a lot obviously if i mess up pi i can reinstall
00:02:58it in the worst case or just drop all extensions and i'm good to go if i mess up my operating system that
00:03:05may be a bit harder but again of course you can if you embrace something like such a plug-in system
00:03:12probably end up in a world where even if you do mess up you can just drop the plug-in where you messed up
00:03:19and you're good to go again but maybe we'll also see operating systems or in general software
00:03:27that are more snapshot based or that have mechanisms that make it easy to go back to earlier states
00:03:35if you break something so that breaking it becomes a natural part of evolving it and so that you can
00:03:42really make it yours because obviously especially right now this is not for everyone this is niche nerd
00:03:48stuff i'm totally aware of that but being able to quickly add a certain feature to a piece of software
00:03:56or to an operating system is just an amazing thought and of course i can vibe code some software and use
00:04:03that on my mac or on my windows machine too and this can get you so far and just to be very clear about
00:04:09that too vibe coding can be perfect for that but depending on the complexity of what you want
00:04:16there also are limits to it right now and it's easy to vibe code something that's then impossible to
00:04:21maintain but there also are many one-off tools or basic tools where you can get great results without
00:04:28ever looking at any code or thinking about the code architecture or even the language you're using at
00:04:33all there basically exist both things right now and i think having an operating system that has this
00:04:42philosophy of extending it of being dynamic and of being maulable built in just as tools like pi habit
00:04:50is very much the future at least in the niche nerd world for now but maybe also in the broader world
00:04:58in the future and i don't know if omachi is the perfect operating system for that you could make the
00:05:05argument that something like nixos is much better for that since nixos is based on that idea of easily
00:05:12configuring it or maybe not easily but of configuring it in declarative ways a bit like you can set up a
00:05:18docker file as a blueprint and then spin up containers you could create an entire episode just about nixos
00:05:25but you could argue that the template based or configuration based approach of nixos is better for this
00:05:33vision my understanding just is that nixos is not very ai embracing but maybe it's a new linux distribution
00:05:41that's created that fits that picture better or that fits that vision better to put it like this
00:05:48but i like the fact that omachi is kind of a pioneer when that when it comes to extensible operating
00:05:54systems and at the same time it's of course not just that it's also as i understand it much more
00:06:00approachable not ugly out of the box and just works out of the box which is not necessarily the case
00:06:07for all other linux distributions and of course if you're a linux diehard nobody's stopping you from
00:06:14starting right from scratch right on arch and then fine-tune that manually or with ai however you want
00:06:21i just think this vision of having very extensible software where extensibility is built in and a key
00:06:32part of its philosophy that is the future or one of the key parts of the future of software which does
00:06:40not mean that the surrounding software should be vibe coded or does not need care and need maintenance and
00:06:48should be developed by people who understand what they're doing and that all is true and especially
00:06:55for the operating system i think should stay true um i'm not talking about running on top of a vibe coded
00:07:02carelessly created operating system but i think being able to make an operating system truly your operating
00:07:10system in an easy way without spending months of diving through or reading through documentation and then
00:07:17wasting time on that that is a really really interesting uh idea and that's the main takeaway for me from what
00:07:26i heard about omachi thus far and that's what i want to get out of my software in the future but of course
00:07:32as always i'm interested in hearing your thoughts and that and what you think about this vision of software and operating systems