I’m on my old laptop again. Been a while since I last used it. It heats up way more than I would want it to, but it also has a very nice keyboard .. for a laptop that is. It’s my old Lenovo Yoga. And there are some changes as it’s no longer running windows. Instead it’s been a few days on Omarchy Quattro. I’d be laying if I would tell you that the install went without hiccups - some touchpad driver fix prevented original installation image from running, so this setup is a zombie bashed together with installing Arch Linux (yes I used Archinstall after getting lost with manual commands the first time around) and subsequently gutting the Omarchy installation from the offending script. Feels wrong to do something so sacrilege when installing OS. Yet it’s also so powerful .. just get into an editor and change the installation scripts - they’re just there and not a magical installer binary. Did I come up with all these magical solutions, well, I had help from Claude and Gemini. With them providing instructions and commands it seems almost easy. And even if I haven’t yet learned all the parameters of all the utilities I used to fix boot issues and to mess with the configurations I’d argue that I wouldn’t have learned that much if I had just given up without having background for how to tackle these problems. Nano may still be annoying but I’m no longer lost and googling how to save and exit, so there is progress. And this is even before actually getting to do something with Omarchy. Speaking of this opinionated assortment of gadgets and widgets that is Omarchy - while there is a lot of controversy around it not being pure it provides a platform to start. And does it in a way more bold way than Ubuntu or Mint ever did for me. The software that lives here now I’ll change with time, once I understand what I need. But it’s been a breath of fresh air rediscovering TUIs that exist more than a limited utility. Maybe I’m just a bit tired from the hyperoptimized visual rhythm of Material design that is everywhere .. there is beauty in complexity and low fidelity can still convey things very impactfully .. or maybe it’s just synthwave nostalgia. I don’t feel that I can make the jump for my home desktop yet, at least not before I can get a new hard drive so I can safely dual boot it without needing to juggle partitions. Windows with it’s familiarity, mouse driven experiences and as a lazy machine for evenings and gaming still has it’s place for me. However here on my laptop I can push myself a little outside of the media consumption habits. A little retreat for the mind to wander while fingers are busy on the keyboard.