Since at least a few people here indicated interest in my investigation into Hyprland and Omarchy, I've discovered quite a few new things about Linux, and even a few about myself. While my discoveries are far from over -- I have barely scratched the surface of what I've found, let alone make the best of it -- I offer a small reflection on having passed a milestone in having broadly determined what works for me and what doesn't. (Implied in this, of course, is that your use case will invariably differ from mine, but some of what I found may surely have interest broader than my own.) *1. Hyprland is nice, but not for me* Giles, of course, is absolutely right. There is nothing new about tiling window managers. The current spike of interest in Hyprland (and Sway, another newish tiling WM) appears to come from a new generation of coders and enthusiasts who like the extensibility and theming without a GUI, using new and powerful tools. In these travels I've learned that the use of "rice" as a verb has found its way from car enthusiasts into modern Linux lingo, in a way that makes me feel old. *2. Arch Linux is even less for me* Arch is clearly the distro-du-jour for coders in the way that CachyOS is for gamers. It has extensive documentation, but that's because even experienced users have to RTFM. If an update renders your system unusable (and even the biggest fans on YouTube admit that happens more often than I'd find comfortable), it's more than likely your own damned fault for having missed some small print in the release notes. Rolling releases means next to no testing on how package updates may affect other packages, so enter this world at your own risk. The AUR mega-repository is touted as this great feature, but I see nothing there that isn't in Ubuntu PPAs or Fedora COPR. *3. It's all so ... retro* Watching Arch install demos (and I watched many) takes me back to the days of Linux Installfests, when local enthusiasts were *necessary* to help people through the activity of getting Linux on their PC. There was this DIY attitude, that you couldn't understand Linux (and in the eyes of some you shouldn't be using it) without knowing how it worked under the hood. Arch is very much a throwback to those days, but in 2025 it comes across almost as a backlash against Linux For The Masses. Running Arch seems less a software installation and more a rite of passage, something you graduate to after Ubuntu or Mint to demonstrate your coder cred. The joy in finally making your audio work after weeks of frustration is something I am very happy to have left behind in Kubuntu and Fedora, yet remains very much a thing among Arch users. I've lived through that kind of time-suck too many times, I'm not going to volunteer for it again if I don't have to. I see Hyprland and the various app/config packages (of which Omarchy is the slickest and most popular) as just an extension of this retro vibe, right down to the psychedelic but very 8-bit Omarchy screensaver <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClZW_c_rLKQ>. *4. Wayland is a non-issue* Except for Discord, for some reason that's still a sore point. Everything else just works for me exactly as it did under X11, and that's not a Hyprland thing. Staying with my trusty Fedora KDE still keeps me on Weyland -- and Plasma made the transition very, very well. *5. There's still some great stuff to hang onto* Despite losing the faith in what I originally called a new holy trinity, I come away from this exploration with much new that I am installing and learning as I return to the desktop I started with. In their retro quest to do as much with the keyboard and as little with the mouse as possible, the new enthusiasts have identified to me tools that are going to make desktop life far more enjoyable and productive. Many are drop-in replacements for existing commands, much like the fish shell that Ron has demonstrated at a recent GTALUG meeting. Maybe you already know these, if not give them a look. I have installed or will be installing soon: - First and foremost, the *ghostty* terminal emulator. It's a remarkable improvement over the stock KDE or GNOME terminal app that many of us use. Also available for MacOS; - *yazi*, a text-based file manager that will display graphic thumbnails under ghostty and kitty; - *neovim*, a modern update of the traditional Unix text edito*r* - *fd* which does what find does but faster and easier; - *fastfetch* for a quick and useful system snapshot; - you'd never think that someone could improve on `cd` but *zoxide* is exactly that - and finally *fzf*, a "fuzzy" file finder Maybe none of these are new to folks here. But I'm just discovering them now, and encourage others to have a look. There may be other software yet to impress me, I'd love to know what others have discovered. *6. The politics I can do without.* Two of the first comments received about Omarchy were not about the quality of the software, but the character of the project founder. I find this quite disturbing and to the detriment of the open source movement. If I was going to shun every every software project led by an arrogant, self-righteous asshole with politics I found abhorrent I probably would never have started using Linux because I wouldn't be able to use gcc way back when. Richard Stallman has repeatedly repulsed me in-person, yet I can still admire him for the software he created and the community he built. Building inclusive communities does not just mean diversity of geographies, skin tones and various forms of self-identification; it also means including people with whose views outside the git repository you don't share. We need more connections, not fewer. The only thing that should matter among coders is the quality of the work and the ability to work with others civilly. So long as one doesn't actually force their politics within their peer group or on their users I see no reason to exclude them, let alone boycott their code. I get it. The FOSS community, from its inception, leans left, It practically has to; the core concept of "use what you need, contribute what you can" is straight out of Marx. But there needs to be slack cut; not forgiveness, but at least tolerance, especially if they keep their politics out of the developers peer group Plus, consider that projects such as Omarchy now have communities of contributors, in the dozens if not hundreds. Are they all to be tarred with the sins of the founder? Is heavy-handed guilt-by-association really a useful tactic? For heaven's sake; if recent events in the US have taught us anything it's that *the heat must come down*. Everywhere. Comments welcome. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56