Ali Yahya, an Apple superfan for 20 years, says Omarchy has been his only setup for three months
He credits Omarchy’s bet on AI-driven customization, takes aim at Apple’s walled garden, and names the DHH interview on Lex Fridman’s podcast that made him switch.
Image: Ali Yahya (@alive_) on X
Another long-time Mac user has crossed over. “After 20 years of being an Apple superfan, I made the full switch to @omarchy Linux. It has now been my sole setup for three months. Never going back,” Ali Yahya (@alive_) wrote on X on November 4, 2026, alongside a short video of his dual-monitor desk.
His reason is less about any single feature and more about where he thinks computing is going. “Omarchy feels like a glimpse of the future. With AI, software is now free to write. It doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all anymore,” he wrote. “It’s now possible for your operating system to mold itself on-the-fly to your individual use cases and preferences. All you should ever have to do is ask it to do that for you.”
And in his view, nobody else is chasing that idea as hard. “Omarchy is the only serious effort fully embracing AI and on a sprint to make that vision real,” Yahya said, adding that “@dhh + team + community really cooked here.”
He did not leave Apple quietly. “Apple products are also still beautiful,” he conceded, “but once you glimpse the world beyond, you will never again unsee the soft oppressiveness of their walled garden.” He described an ecosystem governed by “a brand of paternalism that doesn’t trust you to handle your own machine,” and argued that locked-down choices were tolerable when Apple was innovating. “Today, it just means that you’re forever stuck with Siri.” His sign-off: “So come join the movement.”
What pushed him over the edge was a podcast. “Strongly recommend this podcast with @dhh on @lexfridman. It’s what got me to switch,” Yahya added in a follow-up a few minutes later. He was pointing to DHH’s second appearance on the show, which Lex Fridman posted in full on X on August 26, 2026. The five-hour conversation includes chapters titled “Building Omarchy Linux distro” and “Linux will win the desktop.”
The post traveled. DHH reposted it, and so did Ryan Hughes, both without adding a comment. By 7:00 a.m. Paris time on November 5, it had reached 850 likes and passed 55,000 views.
One thing Yahya has not shared is the hardware: the post does not say which machine is running Omarchy on that desk. Whatever it is, Omarchy has had it to itself for three months.
