If you are reading this I will be formatting and reiterating this later and I will probably add some more content but till then you can read the content if you like

Journey

This is what my Operating System journey looked in college.

Year OS
1st year Windows
2nd year Linux Mint in Virtual Machine on Windows
3rd year Linux Mint dual booted with Windows
4th year Arch Linux with Omarchy

Years are from 2022-2026 Academic Year

In 3rd year, I riced the heck out of my computer lol

Every single day I was doing something to make my computer look pwetty

In 4th year, I got out of this rabbit hole and started using Omarchy

Why I Use Linux?

Coz I’m lazy

YES. It might sound weird but this is the actual reason.

It all started in 8th standard when I learnt how to touch type.

Ever since that day I always hunted for keyboard shortcuts in various programs, be it a browser or my beloved Windows at that point.

I was hitting those Windows + X + u + u to shutdown during my childhood

In 12th standard, I learnt Dvorak coz I found out that QWERTY is built to slow you down

2nd year (2023-2024)

In my 2nd year of B.Tech, I actually started programming.

And naturally some of Primeagen’s videos landed on my YouTube feed. Most of the videos were his takes on Software Engineering. I liked his videos but I had no idea about NVIM or VIM at this point.

Then I came across his video ‘Why I use VIM as my editor?’

And that is the day everything changed.

I started using VIM Motions using VIM Plugin for VSCode. I used that for sometime and then I started using Neovim.

Then I realised Windows is terrible and there are multiple reasons for that which I won’t get into in this blog.

I started using VMware to run Linux Mint and at this point I was using Linux Mint for 90% of the time.

3rd year (2024-2025)

In October 2024, I dual booted (Windows + Linux Mint). From November 2024 I started ricing my computer.

At this point I was using Linux for 99.9% of the time.

I only used Windows once in my 3rd year, when my professor asked us to download a software. Now the interesting part is the software was available for Linux but I was not able to install it. Yeah skill issue.

To be fair it had an installer, I used it and it did not work. What else was I supposed to do?

They didn’t provide the source code, obviously, so I couldn’t even compile it from source.

It wasn’t available in the apt repository. So I had no option other than to use Windows :(

The software in question was Cisco Packet Tracer

4th year (2025-2026)

In August 2025, I switched to Arch Linux with Omarchy and have been using that till now.

How are you lazy then????

Now you might be wondering if I had to learn so much why do I say that I’m lazy

Using a keyboard-centric workflow is much faster than traditional keyboard mouse workflow And as Primeagen says

I don’t want any mental overhead

Let’s take an example.

Say you have a few things open on your computer

  • Editor
  • Browser
  • Spotify
  • WhatsApp

Now if you are on Windows or Mac, how do you switch to these apps?

You may choose to ALT Tab or maybe use your mouse or touchpad to click on the application in taskbar.

Or if you are very fancy, you use mission control on MacOS. Which, honestly, is the worst out of them all.

So what is the problem with these options?

In all these tasks your eyes need to search for the application you want to open.

Now this might not sound a lot of work but when you do this thousand times every single day

Your brain gets frieeeeeed

And because I’m lazy I want the following:

  • I don’t want to search for my application with my eyes while alt tabbing
  • I don’t use my mouse coz moving from my keyboard to mouse and then back to keyboard is too much work for me

And keep in mind that if you are using your mouse you have to do that like 1000s of times every single day

So I use a window manager and I always keep the following on the same workspace number

  • 1 -> Note taking app (Obsidian)
  • 2 -> Main Browser (Zen)
  • 3 -> Terminal
  • 4 -> 2nd Browser (Brave)
  • 7 -> YAZI (File Manager)
  • 8 -> WhatsApp or messaging app
  • 9 -> Code Editor (Neovim BTW)
  • 10 -> Videos (MPV)

So whenever I want to go to my browser I do not have to even think, my hands go SUPER+2 without me even thinking about it.

When I want terminal my hands just go SUPER+3

I have no mental overhead and neither do I have to move my hand from my keyboard to my mouse or trackpad.

What I want from my computer

  • Dvorak keyboard layout
  • Keyboard driven code editor (Neovim)

Coz its better duh

  • Window Manager / Compositor (Hyprland)

For keyboard driven navigation

  • File Manager (Yazi)

Keyboard driven file manager

Tools and software I use:

  • ZSH

  • Terminal Emulator (Kitty)

  • Terminal Multiplexer (Zellij)

  • Keyboard based image viewer (Swayimg)

  • Keyboard based PDF viewer (Zathura)

  • Keyboard based video player (MPV)

  • Keyboard based audio player (kew)

  • Zoxide and fzf

  • Nerdfonts

  • Note taking app (Obsidian)

  • Zen browser

  • Clipboard history (just use walker’s inbuilt clipboard)

  • Atuin (Magical Shell history)

I don’t remember the rest but these are the most important ones right now