I Was thinking about switching to full-time Linux for years, maybe decades. I've had Linux installed on side-computer (Ubuntu and Mint on my home server), but not on my main laptop. I made the switch on 23 March. I decided to install Omarchy, because it looked cool and it was a new and refreshing user experience. I thought I´d give it a try.
But I don´t love the fascist captain and I don´t love the bloat. Now I also hear that it is being build and maintained by AI.
But also, I love the way Omarchy works. I love the keyboard oriented aproach. I love the super-button. I love the menus. I love the nvim setup. I love the desktop layout. I love that it just works out-of-the-box and that it is (or appears) stable. I love that installing anything is so easy.
I appreciate Omarchy for being such a good gateway drug into the Linux world for people like me and I think it deserves some credit for that. But I also have ethical complaints that ruin the fun.
So what I'm really looking for is, how can I take all these features I like so much, and apply them on a proper distro?
The obvious solution seems Arch, but I want my computer to work without having to spend weeks learning how all the mechanics and fine configuration details work. I don´t even now what the configuration details are that make the things I like. Maybe that's not an issue with Arch, but I don´t know much about Arch tbh. I haven´t had the time to learn about it.
Or maybe I'm just asking too much as an old man (though dhh is a decade my senior) and I should just go back to Mint...
You could always fork them. That's one of the wonderful things about Linux and FOSS. Straight copy the code to a new project. That may be beyond your current skill set but it's always an option.
I mean you only have three paths really. Distro-hop until you find something else. Start with a pre-built like mint or fedora and make it what you want or build from scratch.
I distro hopped for a long time, then ended up going through the basic arch install one weekend and omg it's easy now with their archinstall script, I've gotten lazy and just use Fedora.
Tldr: I suggest investing the time to do the arch install on your side machine just as a learning experience, particularly by hand and without the script. It will be invaluable to you not just as a Linux user but as a computer user. Even if you end up on another OS you'll be more capable and comfortable with the terminal. I really can't emphasize how useful that will be and what doors it may unlock for you.
Small example is all the poorly written yet functional bash scripts I write for myself. How I used wget -r to scrape my university's website and made a database of old solutions to homework and exams for myself.
@Imperious_melange @abbadon420 Also consider LFS https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/