I had a Dell Latitude 7490 sitting unused because Windows had become hard to live with on it. The fan would make a pulsing sound, stop working, and then the laptop would overheat enough that I could not really use it. I listened to David Senra's podcast with DHH, then started following DHH and watching him talk about Omarchy on X. I felt like I needed to give it a try.
Omarchy is DHH's Linux project, and it gave this old machine another job. I had a Codex agent do the research and help me through the install while I was there to guide it as needed. It prepared the USB install media, wiped the old Windows setup, and walked me through booting from the USB drive. The installer itself was insanely fast on this older machine. I remember it taking less than three minutes, and I liked that Omarchy shows a clock while it installs. I appreciate DHH’s focus on making installation fast, because why not!
Once it was running, we also set up a Windows virtual machine, which is basically Windows running inside Omarchy, just to have optionality.
After two weeks, I have not had the old fan or overheating problems, even with agents running pretty much around the clock. I also think Windows consumed power much faster.
Building things for myself
Since then, I have been messing around with vibe coding some side projects, including three plugins that run on the Omarchy desktop. Intake puts videos, podcasts, articles, and newsletters in one inbox. Scout helps me find other Omarchy plugins. Fantasy Feed lets me follow NFL plays and see what they mean for fantasy points.
I made all three for myself. It is really starting to hit me how valuable it is to have an operating system I can build on and customize for myself. I also want to mess with making cool backgrounds and more plugins that make my life easier.
Using keyboard shortcuts was newer to me, and I am still a point and click guy, but it is actually faster once you get the hang of it. The Dell is now another always-on machine for agent work and vibe coding, alongside my Mac mini.
I also have a MacBook Pro I recently bought, and I love Macs. I am using both macOS and Omarchy, but eventually I think I will get a nicer laptop I can run Omarchy on. The power of Linux in this new agentic world is really fun to see. Open-source is powerful!