Finding the Fun Again
Preface: Losing the Fun!?!?!?
I suppose the phrase "losing the fun" is hyperbolic. It was not a sudden loss of fun, more of a... desensitization to the enjoyment of working with computers. Still an odd statement for someone who is chronically glued to said computer and derives great joy from the things he does on it (games, tabletop writing, all that good stuff), but that there was the problem.
I was enjoying the activities that I used the computer for. Not the actual use of the computer.
Yes, I will admit that grammatically speaking this is a tiny distinction, but from a more emotional standpoint it is quite a significant distinction; for me, at least.
I am someone that derives a great deal of joy and accomplishment from mastery of something. It doesn't truly matter what I'm trying to master, only that I do. This is most often the case with the tools I use. It is something that I could not verbalize until Primeagen, someone whose content I have consumed for a couple of years now, made a comment about it. To paraphrase his words:
It doesn't matter if you use Vim or VS Code or Emacs, you need to be the master of the tools you use.
Of course. It makes sense when someone else spells it out for me! This is what I've been doing for a long time, I just had no real way to articulate that this is what I enjoyed most about the hobbies and skills that I pick up. It is just the way I am wired.
How Did You Find Fun Again?
I installed Omarchy.
Yes, yes, alright, I know. It's the current "hot new trend" on TechTwitter and blah blah. I get it, it's somewhat predictable.
Jokes aside, though, I have wanted to try working with a tiling window manager for a long time and just could not find a good alternative with Windows. My previous attempts at trying Arch and other distros of Linux didn't quite fill that void, and I wasn't about to start working with hyprland from a scuffed config before figuring out whether I even liked it!
I just didn't have time for the past 6-12 months to commit to that with everything else happening, so the result of all of this is that I am trying it now. Omarchy isn't perfect, let me say that right off the bat. DHH calls it an opinionated OS, and boy... it's definitely got some opinions; as do I.
What is great, however, is that hyprland/Linux in general is a system built with customization in mind. It is something that I have never been able to find on Windows with years of searching and trying tools like Rainmeter and tiling window managers on it. It just didn't have the same feel, or care.
That's why I've really enjoyed working with Omarchy, actually. It is a level of attention and care that's been put into designing the configs. It's smooth, it's slick, and it's omakase (お任せ) which means "I leave it up to you." It's like us in the West saying "dealer's choice", or "chef's choice". We are giving full control of it to DHH to serve us what he wants to serve us. That's what Omarchy is, a glimpse into the man's workflows and system environment.
But, we're still part of that experience. Unlike Windows, omakase in Arch/Hyprland/Omarchy means "this is what we put on the table, you can arrange it how you want. We won't force you to eat it a certain way." And that is what has always drawn me to Linux. The presentation is what drew me to Hyprland. Now, the care and attention to build for me a near-complete set of environments that I can use to just explore the system with... that is what drew me to Omarchy.
So far, I have gotten the same feeling from using Omarchy as I did when I first started using neovim: child-like excitement and giddiness. It is a way of using my computer that allows me full control, allows me to eschew the mouse for a lot of my operations (something I've always loved about vim, too), and enjoy the process of playing with my computer for the first time since I was in my late teens/early 20s. Not using it to entertain me in other ways like games or videos or anything, but just exploring the system, tweaking the files, learning how Omarchy and Arch's ecosystem works.
Closing Words
This is NOT for everyone. This is for a particular group of people that really want to explore the possibilities and are not intimidated by navigating through terminals or digging into configs and dotfiles. This is the kind of step you take when the only that ever surprises you about using Windows any more is that they have added more integrated, non-optional AI into every facet of their system. I fully expect the Calculator in Windows to soon have AI that tries to correct you with hallucinatory bs.
Rant over. Gushing over Omarchy over.
Fuck Windows, for now.
Update After Another Evening With Omarchy
I've run into issues, but with the prolific nature of a lot of the underlying systems (Wayland and Arch) I was able to find a pretty solid fix. It took a while, but it was fixable.
The issue was that while clicking and dragging the camera in Final Fantasy XIV, keyboard input got pushed aside and blocked. Very annoying. But... Wine exists, as does Valve's Gamescope. These two combined resolved that issue. Next up is to get Star Citizen working, and then I have almost no reason to dual-boot Windows.
To Reiterate
Fuck Windows, for now.