Just to give you the context on the reason for switch. I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina from Early 2015 and a T430 with Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3320M (4) @ 3.30 GHz. Both are old machines, as is evident, and make it difficult to run modern applications.

Apple has stopped releasing updates for my MacBook and brew does not support it either. So, I had to switch to MacPort.

On my ThinkPad, I use Ubuntu. I, for most of my life, have used Fedora and for past one year have been using Ubuntu. I used to love Fedora because I could tweak it. However, now I want something to just work out of the box and Ubuntu provided that. I used GNOME on both. But I was already bored of it and wanted to try something new.

Since both my machines were in need of upgrade and not wanting to spend money on a new MacBook or non-Mac machine, I was looking for options.

Google app one day recommended an article on Omarchy. A few things excited me about it. The strongest draw was that it works on old Intel MacBooks and that most hardware works out of the box. However, in order to not ruin my MacBook Pro (Omarchy doesn’t allow dual-boot on MacBook), I decided to switch from Ubuntu to Omarchy on my ThinkPad.

But there is more that Omarchy does which make it a delight to work on. Here are why I like it:

  1. It never goes stale. Rolling releases mean no “your machine is too old, we stop supporting you.” This in itself is a boon for my machines, specially ThinkPad, whose hardware is held together using electrical tape. That is also the exact betrayal (too dramatic?) Apple served my MacBook.

  2. It’s an Ubuntu-calm Arch. “Omakase” is one command richer than a zero-config GNOME. Omarchy gives me Ubuntu’s out-of-the-box calm with Arch underneath for when I want to tinker. Setup was easy. It took 3 minutes for installation to complete. The record is 27s.

  3. It revives old machinery. Lean Arch base + Hyprland/Wayland compositing gives the “slow laptop” more life.

  4. Everything is keyboard-first. Just like Emacs, Omarchy makes everything accessible through Keyboard. Tiling WM, Super + Enter for terminal, Super + K for keybindings - everything is within a reachable distance of your keyboard.

  5. Theming is whole-system, not piecemeal. If you know me, I switch Emacs theme using C-c T on my Emacs. Omarchy takes it a notch further. Pick a theme and the bar, terminal, editor, and lock screen all change together. Feels polished in a way GNOME never did.

  6. Controlling it is one command. A single omarchy CLI does updates, themes, reminders, screenshots, screen recording, night light, package installs, etc. No hunting through eight config files.

  7. It’s safe to experiment on. btrfs snapshots + LUKS encryption is enabled by default. I can tinker freely and rollback instead of reinstalling.

  8. Opinionated but not locked down. Omarchy comes with strong defaults that can be overridden. The tool choices are coherent (except that Emacs is not the default editor but is available). So, you are not configuring and fighting, you are just configuring.

  9. AI First. We are living in 2026. Even a year ago most of the companies had not started using AI Agentic coding and AI Agents were not that popular. But now AI Agents are everywhere. Omarchy makes these AI Agents available out of the box. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, etc. are installed when you first use them. And all are a keystroke away.

  10. Tiling is Perfection. Omarchy uses Hyprland.

A year ago my ThinkPad was a machine I tolderated - held together with tape, waiting for the day I’d have money for a replacement. Today it’s the machine I reach for. Omarchy didn’t make an old laptop usable again; it made using it enjoyable, which is more than Apple or Ubuntu ever did for it. If it keeps earning its keep on this ThinkPad, my MacBook might be next in line.