Cool idea, but supporting homebrew is a big yikes!
I hope no serious developers on linux ever use homebrew, it's the worst package manager by far.
Most package managers support versioning and keeping old versions of installs around, but not homebrew. That's why I'm boycotting it at this point, got burnt by it too many times.
I'd rather use pacman or apt-get or pkgsrc or nix or any other package manager than homebrew.
tristan957 · 3h ago
I don't use Homebrew because it installs to /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew. It makes absolutely no sense to use a whole new user, and then use non-standard directories.
If you change where Homebrew installs, then you are on your own because they don't support changing the install path.
seemaze · 3h ago
while I use Homebrew on macOS for the errant command line utility or library, I share your concern. I use the Universal Blue Silverblue variant for it's integrated Nvidia support with either mise-en-place[0], or the native toolbx[1] utility for isolated environments.
I use bluefin linux full time and don't use homebrew. I do all development in containers, so I can use whatever I want inside them.
jcastro · 3h ago
Bluefin contributor here, why are you using homebrew that way? For development use a container.
crowcroft · 1h ago
A lot of people don't use containers/don't want to use containers. I guess Bluefin might just not be for them though.
mtndew4brkfst · 41m ago
This is my impression - if you explicitly don't want to use toolbox or devcontainers I don't think you're on Bluefin's happy path at all, and the maintainers don't seem concerned enough by that to improve other experiences.
jcastro · 28m ago
Right, Bluefin is for container development.
lemonberry · 1h ago
Pardon my ignorance, but how else or what else would you use Homebrew?
mikestorrent · 3h ago
Is there a simple summary of why homebrew is so problematic?
rufugee · 3h ago
I share your concerns about homebrew. It was one of the reasons I gave up on Silverblue/Bluefin.
mtillman · 2h ago
I agree with you. DHH is a big ruby guy so my expectation was he’d use brew.
fcarraldo · 3h ago
I've also been very happy with Silverblue (an alternate flavor of Universal Blue, the same guts as Bluefin). It took a bit of an adjustment period to get used to using an immutable distro, but given that I run this as the sole OS on my daily driver, reliability is paramount. It gives the same feeling of running a highly stable OS like MacOS, but with the power, ergonomics and customizability of Linux - and anything I need that isn't easy to fit into the immutable model is just a simple Distrobox invocation away.
It's "Container-driven development" done right - containerized applications and shells _feel_ native via Distrobox (which gives them access to the host FS, network, hardware, etc by default) but without the risks of native development causing dependency conflicts. And if I screw something up, I can just spin up a new container.
abhinavk · 3h ago
Silverblue is a Fedora project. The Universal Blue and its flavors (Bluefin, Bazzite, Aurora) are based on its image. They are basically community maintained versions of silverblue because Fedora is very cautious (and stubborn) in including QoL things.
I really appreciate that he included a video with great narration. So much better than the animated gifs that provide too little context and go too fast.
indy · 1h ago
He used a video with great narration back in the day to showcase the original release of Ruby on Rails.
Nearly 20 years later and it's surprising that more people don't do this.
aidenn0 · 59m ago
Not surprising to me at all. Doing it well is not a skill most people have.
samgranieri · 4h ago
I've been using this on a mini pc I bought and I'm really digging it. I could see myself using it as my daily driver instead of macOS one day. I also am floored by how low the resource consumption is on it
richardlblair · 4h ago
I used the one he put together for Ubuntu. My setup had become old and clunky. My dotfiles had become a mass. It was nice to go from 0 to something useful without effort. Now I just make changes as I see fit.
ezekg · 4h ago
I've been following his journey here since Omakub. I plan on refurbishing a 2015 MBP that had its HDD die to run Omarchy this weekend. I've heard it runs well on old hardware. Will be nice to have a mobile dev machine again.
islanderfun · 4h ago
Reminds me of crunchbang, in that it's a small opinionated distro-ish. Seems like a fun try.
neillyons · 51m ago
Crunchbang was such a good distro! I ran linux for about seven years. Ubuntu and then Crunchbang. Had my 2012 MacBook Pro dual boot into Crunchbang. Battery life was awful. It had no automatic fan control, so the laptop got so hot I could barely touch it. I ended up writing a bash script to manually control the fans using function keys https://gist.github.com/nwjlyons/b29ee6f7e26595f55a2a
As cool as it was, I can't be bothered with any of that these days. Just give me a Macbook Pro, as I know it will work and have amazing battery life!
bachmeier · 4h ago
I'm going to try this out. I used i3 as my main desktop for a long spell. I don't remember the specifics but I eventually moved back to Mate due to some inconveniences. I've never heard of Hyprland TBH.
tristan957 · 3h ago
If you're used to i3, maybe you would be interested in Sway. It's a port of i3 to Wayland.
chao- · 3h ago
Observing the progression of DHH's Linux journey has been entertaining, and I don't mean that in a condescending way! A mix of lighthearted enjoyment, and anticipation of which part of the tech tree is next for him. Will the next rabbit hole he stumbles into be immutable distros? If so, will he take the Silverblue path or the NixOS path?
And so on.
SvenL · 2h ago
Yes, agree. It reminded me of my toddlers, when they learned walking (also in a non condescending way). I hope he discovers FreeBSD next.
Shank · 4h ago
I find it moderately amusing that it seems like this ships with Chromium instead of Firefox, and doesn't note this anywhere in the manual. The manual just says "Browser" but like, really. I also find that this is definitely throwing someone off the deep end (Hyprland + neovim are not that difficult to learn, but not exactly intuitive), but I guess that's what Omakub is for (to not throw people off the deep end but still be on Linux instead of macOS).
throwaway74354 · 1h ago
Chromium choice is easy to explain due to PWA-shortcuts integration. That's less clunky than shipping Firefox with an extension or adding an external GUI PWA-manager.
sam_lowry_ · 4h ago
It is opinionated just like Rails.
pyrale · 4h ago
It's no surprise given the distro name, and DHH's previous use of the word Omakase [1, or, perhaps, 2]
Oh that's surprising, Omakub had Firefox. I thought DHH mainly used Firefox too.
ChocolateGod · 3h ago
Hyprland seems to be the compositor/environment getting all the attention at the moment, I've been meaning to try it out.
dismalaf · 31m ago
Super cool and I want to try it out. My only issue is that sometimes my wife uses my laptop occasionally. She can navigate Gnome + Dock easily, but a tiling WM might be a step too far...
fouc · 3h ago
I used to run Linux on my home computer between 1998-2007 (Slackware, Gentoo, Arch Linux) but it often felt like there was a lot of extra work with configuring and fixing drivers and so on. After that I switched to MacOS and never looked back until now.
The appeal of Omakub & Omarchy to me is that it minimizes the amount of time wasted on getting everything setup.
I setup Omakub on a 2015 MBP at the beginning of this year. I'll definitely be switching to Omarchy soon.
My only thought is that it would be nice if Omarchy/Omakub used something more declarative than a bunch of bash scripts, like nix or something else.
acegopher · 3h ago
Out of the box Linux Mint, Debian or Fedora Gnome or KDE is similarly "just works". A lot has changed since 2007 Linux.
dismalaf · 1h ago
Dunno, in 2007 Ubuntu and Suse "just worked". Others were more flaky but there were solid distros even back then...
lvl155 · 1h ago
A lot of people post their dot files. It’s an interesting idea but I would not run Omarchy as my main dev machine.
tasuki · 3h ago
> I setup Omakub on a 2015 MBP at the beginning of this year. I'll definitely be switching to Omarchy soon.
Why? And... why? If you like omakub than why switch? What does omarchy do better?
Wrt the bash scripts, parts look extremely brittle: this stuff is sure to stop setting up new machines in the future...
indigodaddy · 4h ago
Is distribution the right word here?
samgranieri · 4h ago
I'd probably call this an Arch Linux setup instead. A curated set of configs. Kind of like how i'm using LazyVim instead of rolling my own NeoVim configuration these days
I mean, if you think DHHs workflow might work for you, I don't see the harm in trying it out. It just feels like one of those things where people think that they'll become just like the author, if they adopt their tooling.
wiseowise · 4h ago
Ironic how DHH ditched everything Apple after the whole lawsuit shenanigans, but keeps using Google stuff.
miah_ · 3h ago
Similarly that people are interested in running anything made by him after he's repeatedly shown his true colors.
dfee · 3h ago
What are his true colors?
baggy_trough · 2h ago
He deviated from progressive orthodoxy.
indy · 57m ago
Does this kind of woke scolding still work?
bachmeier · 4h ago
If you don't care about the privacy angle, and he apparently doesn't, Google's offerings are hard to beat.
wiseowise · 2h ago
The original issue is that Apple takes 30% if you use in-app purchases, which Google also does.
dismalaf · 1h ago
Chrome is nearly singlehandedly responsible for the open web being as good as it is and the whole web 2.0 boom. Computing changed after Chrome was released... Between Chrome and Google Docs, it basically made platform agnostic computing possible...
Also Google makes it easy to skirt around the 30% through sideloading and web signups.
https://projectbluefin.io/
I hope no serious developers on linux ever use homebrew, it's the worst package manager by far.
Most package managers support versioning and keeping old versions of installs around, but not homebrew. That's why I'm boycotting it at this point, got burnt by it too many times.
I'd rather use pacman or apt-get or pkgsrc or nix or any other package manager than homebrew.
If you change where Homebrew installs, then you are on your own because they don't support changing the install path.
[0]https://mise.jdx.dev [1]https://containertoolbx.org
It's "Container-driven development" done right - containerized applications and shells _feel_ native via Distrobox (which gives them access to the host FS, network, hardware, etc by default) but without the risks of native development causing dependency conflicts. And if I screw something up, I can just spin up a new container.
[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/
Nearly 20 years later and it's surprising that more people don't do this.
As cool as it was, I can't be bothered with any of that these days. Just give me a Macbook Pro, as I know it will work and have amazing battery life!
And so on.
[1]: https://dhh.dk/2012/rails-is-omakase.html [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E99FnoYqoII
The appeal of Omakub & Omarchy to me is that it minimizes the amount of time wasted on getting everything setup.
I setup Omakub on a 2015 MBP at the beginning of this year. I'll definitely be switching to Omarchy soon.
My only thought is that it would be nice if Omarchy/Omakub used something more declarative than a bunch of bash scripts, like nix or something else.
Why? And... why? If you like omakub than why switch? What does omarchy do better?
Wrt the bash scripts, parts look extremely brittle: this stuff is sure to stop setting up new machines in the future...
Right!
Also Google makes it easy to skirt around the 30% through sideloading and web signups.
Ctrl_W