I built Familiar to help my family move from Mac to Linux.
Then Omarchy shipped almost exactly what I’d been building.
“Ah shit, that’s tokens wasted"
Now I’m putting it on life support, proud of what I made and asking why success feels a bit like loss https://x.com/i/article/2110069363613065216
Letting Familiar Go
This one was hard to write.
The core team had shipped almost exactly what I’d been trying to provide with Familiar: a desktop layout that made the move from a Mac feel a little less alien. DHH dropped me a DM about it a few days back, so I knew something was coming. Knowing ahead of time didn’t quite remove the feeling when it arrived.
So I think I’m going to put Familiar on life support.
Handle bugs, look after the people already using it, and move my effort elsewhere. Where I find problems with the official implementation, I’d rather help get them fixed in core so everyone benefits.
That seems like the right decision. I’m still getting used to how it feels.
I built Familiar because I wanted my family to try Linux and move off their Macs. That was the starting point. A practical problem, close to home: how do you make a different operating system feel comfortable enough that someone will give it a chance?
Omarchy is a Linux desktop, and Familiar was my attempt to soften that first encounter. Its Mac layout gave people something they recognised. There was also a Windows-style taskbar, although I’ll admit that arrived through feature creep because code is now cheap, not because I wanted it to start with. The community had already voted for me to split that part off.
The plugin gave me something too. It became part of the desktop I’d built and owned. Every time I used it, there was a little bit of my own work sitting there. I’d made Omarchy mine.
That’s the part I hadn’t really accounted for. When the same idea becomes part of the default desktop, you gain something useful, but a little of that feeling of ownership goes with it. The familiar thing on your screen no longer needs to be the thing you made.
It’s an awkward feeling to explain when you’re pleased the core team has done it.
Familiar had recorded more than a thousand clones. I took that as a signal that other people wanted this sort of experience too. It doesn’t tell me how many people used it every day, and I can’t claim it caused the core team’s decision. But seeing a nearly identical approach arrive in Omarchy made me think I’d been working on a problem worth solving.
Then I had to ask whether that problem still needed my separate project.
I don’t think there’s a strong argument for keeping Familiar in active development. The Windows taskbar is the obvious remaining difference, but it was already heading towards a separate future. Continuing to build the Mac side would mean spending my time maintaining an alternative to something people now get by default.
I could find things to add. I’m quite good at finding things to add. That’s how you end up with a Windows taskbar.
But I’d be giving myself more work without a convincing reason for asking people to choose it.
I haven’t retired a project before. Starting one is much more familiar territory. There’s a problem, an idea, a burst of enthusiasm, and suddenly I’m burning through tokens trying to make it real. AI has made that process much faster for me. I can follow an idea far enough to find out whether it’s useful, rather than leaving it as a thought I never have time to explore.
I’m discovering that I can stop much faster too.
That doesn’t make the work disposable. People spent their own time installing Familiar, testing it, finding bugs and helping me improve it. I owe them thanks, and I owe existing users some care in how I wind it down. I don’t want my excitement about the next thing to become their broken desktop.
Some of that work is redundant now. I don’t think I need to dress that up. There are fixes and decisions that won’t have much of a future in my codebase. But the people who helped gave me a better understanding of what it takes to build something others actually use. That stays with me.
When the community found out what was happening, people reached out. I’m not doing this for recognition, but I appreciated that. It reminded me that a project can matter to people even when they’re ready to move on from it.
My attention is already turning to other projects, perhaps OmaChat? I’d like to put more effort into something with a distinct job to do. There’s no guarantee that another project won’t eventually face the same decision. I’m beginning to think that’s something I should be able to handle, rather than something I need to avoid at all costs.
The question I keep coming back to is what I’m counting as success.
If I measure Familiar by how long I can keep it alive, this is a disappointing ending. If I include making my own desktop feel like mine, building something other people wanted, and learning from the people who helped, there’s quite a lot there.
And the thing I wanted for my family - a less intimidating way into Linux - is now closer to being there without an extra plugin.
I still had that “ah shit” moment. I’m attached to what I made, and I’ll miss having a reason to keep making it better.
But I wanted an easier desktop. Now I need to let myself use it.