An Omarchy Journey (Part 2)

After installing Omarchy on a Chromebook, I was really feeling the sluggishness of the machine and decided that I would need something faster to appreciate what this new OS might offer.

The Machine

With little-to-no research, I jumped on Facebook Marketplace and found someone selling refurbished laptops. He took great care in his process too: all the hardware was cleaned, there was a licensed Windows 11 Pro install, and even the BIOS was updated to the latest version. As an Apple Guy, I was amazed at how much machine $300 could get.

Here are the specs:

• Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1
• 10th Gen Intel i5 (8-core @ 4.4 GHz)
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB SSD
• USB-C (with Thunderbolt!)
• 2x USB-A
• HDMI
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Fingerprint Reader

The keyboard felt fantastic and the case had no damage at all. The biggest downside was the screen: a 720p TN panel. It was just plain garbage and quite the drop from my 16” Macbook Pro’s screen. Even so, this was fantastic value.

Turns out there is a whole community of folks who adore the ThinkPad!

In a moment of perfect timing, Omarchy 2.0 had just released!

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The install was super seamless. No errors or issues. I did need to turn off Secure Boot but that also turned out to be easy since ThinkPad’s BIOS is pretty well designed. Since the install was so fast, I could now understand a little more of the appeal that the slow Chromebook couldn’t offer. After the headaches of the Chromebook (and a brief stint of trying to get an old Mac mini working and even trying VM’s on the Macbook Pro), I was amazed at how much just worked out of the box with this ThinkPad. Connecting the Studio Display was flawless with full 5K resolution, speakers, and webcam all working as expected. Fingerprint reader too!

The Display

After spending some time with the ThinkPad, I realized I couldn’t take it any longer with the display. Fortunately, part of the benefit of this machine is how upgradable it is by their owners. Maybe not as much as the lauded T480 yet certainly much more than the Macbook.

I ordered a 1080p IPS panel¹ from Amazon and it arrived the next day with all the tools needed to pry open the case. After putting my daughter to bed, I cracked open a beer and got to work. Watching a couple Youtube videos beforehand helped me understand what do expect from the process. Even so, I was a bit nervous and my hands sweated a lot.

The panel frame was held in place with some adhesive which came off fairly easily. The bottom (closest to the hinge) was the real challenge and I ended up messing up the old display a bit (good thing I don’t need it). The feeling of doing this myself was such a small but lovely thrill and exactly the purpose of getting this laptop! The appeal of a Framework machine grows and grows.

The Experience

Again, I was coming from the Chromebook as my first exposure to Omarchy. It was rough. I was wondering if the hype was unfounded. Thankfully, the ThinkPad removed that concern. As almost everyone else has said, the most surprising thing is that a relatively-old machine like this can feel fast again.

I should probably point out that not everything was crazy fast. Opening Chrome for the first time took a beat. Neovim had to do some weird start-up sequence while Lazy installed a bunch of plug-ins. These are not things that persist on subsequent launches but it’s good to remember that first launches of apps can be slower.

Hyprland’s windowing system is a delight. The feel of mashing Super-Enter repeatedly and watching the windows get smaller and smaller is so cool. It’s very impractical, of course. But that does lead me to some things that made me realize how using this laptop felt different from the Macbook.

No dock or desktop. This revealed how much of a twitch I have with MacOS where I just look at the dock for something else to do. It was like a little candy box always showing me other things I could be using. Omarchy only shows what’s open and you know it’s open because it’s on the screen in-front of you. There is no windows hiding behind other windows. If you Super-W that window, the app quits. While there are workspaces you can switch between, there aren’t any layers (except for the Spotlight-like search and other small pop-ups). It just felt so much more direct.