The 14” M1 Pro is the best laptop ever created. By far. But… it has been a few years since I looked forward to installing the new version of MacOS. I can’t even remember what the current version is called.
Enter Omarchy. As much as I like Apple’s hardware, nothing beats building your own computer. That’s why since I was a teenager I’ve built several gaming PCs running Windows and Steam. Lately I haven’t enjoyed a lot of games anymore though (Clair Obscur being a wonderful exception!), so I hadn’t built a new PC for five years.
Of course, the easy thing to do would be to order a new 13” Framework laptop, install Omarchy and call it a day. But where’s the fun in that? Also, as much as I support Framework’s mission and I believe they are essential to this new-found love for Linux, their products don’t quite match my sense of aesthetics.
Luckily, with Linux I can build whatever I want!
The build
The excellent FormD T1 case matches my 5K display perfectly. At just under 10L, it’s the pinnacle of SFF engineering. The quality and precision of the CNC'd aluminium is unparalleled. It's hard to get your hands on, but if you want to buy one be sure to get the v2.1 here. V2.5 is made by a different company with worse quality control (I know, it's a whole thing).
Here's the build that I ended up with: CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D RAM: Kingston "Fury Beast" DDR5 2x32GB 6000 MB: Gigabyte B850i Aorus Pro SSD: 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro PSU: Corsair SFX 1000W (!) GPU: Gigabyte RTX 3080
Case: FormD T1 Cooling: Cooler Master Atmos 240 AIO Keyboard: Thermal by wilba.tech Mouse: Logitech MX Master 3 Display: Apple 5K Studio Display
I combined the PC with a custom mechanical keyboard and the Apple Studio Display that I already had. The end result looks like it could have shipped from Cupertino. The T1 sits elegantly beside the Studio Display, while the mechanical keyboard puts Apple’s Magic Keyboard to shame. What surprised me most was how cohesive the entire system feels despite being assembled from components across different manufacturers.
There were some hurdles setting it up though.
Installing Omarchy
For my first experiment I installed Omarchy on my old gaming PC rocking an Intel 8600K on a Z390 ITX motherboard. Installation was flawless, so after my initial experiment I wanted to go all-in and ordered a new 9950X3D and all other required hardware. Unfortunately that meant replacing everything except for my graphics card.
That’s when I encountered the first ‘joys’ of running Linux.
The included WiFi/Bluetooth chip in my B850i motherboard was made by Realtek, who are notorious for mediocre Linux support. My wifi and bluetooth connections were unstable and would disconnect every other minute. Finding out what caused the issues took the better part of a day, but eventually I managed to pull a new driver from the latest Linux kernel and apply that to my system.
I briefly thought about replacing the WiFi-chip with an Intel BE201, but that would require disassembling my motherboard’s integrated I/O-shield. And if you’ve ever built a PC in a very tiny SFF case, you know that’s a last resort.
Fortunately I didn’t have to, because my system was running fine now!
As a sidenote, the latest ISO makes it substantially easier to install Omarchy and my driver issues have been fixed in the latest kernel.
Rails on Linux
Next up: development with Rails. Installing puma-dev is one of the first things I do on a new machine. It makes it incredibly easy to host Rails apps locally and make them accessible through a configurable TLD without having to specify ports. It wasn't as smooth as running `puma-dev -setup` on MacOS, but it works just as well now.
Docker was something I hadn't used locally before, but using it to install MariaDB was an absolute breeze. Even easier than on MacOS. In order to get the performance I needed I set my innodb-buffer-pool-size to 8G so that large imports from sqldump would import much more quickly. It took my old Macbook almost an entire workday to import a backup of our production database, but my new machine did it in just over half an hour!
What makes Omarchy so productive is that pretty much everything I need as a Rails developer is included out of the box. It feels tailormade for me, but the great thing about Linux is that you can actually make it tailormade for yourself. Navigating your OS with just a few keystrokes is bliss. Once you get in that flow state, it’s unbelievably fluid.
The transition to Linux reminded me why I fell in love with computing in the first place. There’s something deeply satisfying about having complete control over your system, from the hardware you choose to the kernel drivers you compile.
Sure, fitting a 9950X3D and high-end graphics card into 10 liters requires more planning than buying a Mac Studio. But for those of us who live in terminals and text editors, the payoff is substantial. My custom rig feels faster, more responsive, and infinitely more mine than any off-the-shelf solution.
Apple makes incredible hardware, but they’ve lost their software soul. Linux, meanwhile, has found its moment. From Pewdiepie de-Googling, to DHH creating Omarchy. The ecosystem is mature, the hardware support (mostly) works, and the performance is exceptional.
My setup now delivers the premium experience I’ve come to expect from Apple hardware, but with the flexibility and performance that only comes from building it yourself.
It’s an exciting time to build computers again. And this time, I’m sticking with the platform that respects my choices as much as my workflow.
