Omarchy Is Not A Distro(abyss.fish) |
Omarchy Is Not A Distro(abyss.fish) |
The biggest problem with Linux as a desktop gaining more popularity is the learning curve. In our bubble, you might not want any software installed and want your first install to barely have a desktop environment, but the average Joe wants their browser, music player and password manager ready to go. If omarchy is nothing but a gateway drug to making leaving windows much easier then I am all for it, even if we bikeshed about whether or not it’s a distributed (I agree it’s not). Once you have it installed you can customise just as much as you would any other “distribution”, it just makes that first step that bit easier. Linux, if it wants to win the war, needs to make it easier for new folks to onboard. The winning desktop distributions (omarchy, cachyos etc) make onboarding easy.
And yes I did actually end up going thru archinstaller first as the other route failed, but turned out it was archinstall failing to start with, failing to clear the existing Chrome OS partitions even after selecting the disk (full disk!) properly. I managed to install it on a N23 Chromebook I got for 30€, with just a 32GB SSD on it. Now I am on the edge of making my work laptop dual boot it, so I can run some heavier software on it. Haven't used as much Desktop Linux in the previous 15 years as I have the previous month.
It's supposed to be opinionated to start with. It absolutely is better that way. Probably one of the easiest to mod too, changed my battery indicator to show current wattage with an one-line change.
As it says - Chef's choice. I want my food to be edible to start with when I'm hungry.
This is not a judgement of using a prepared meal box.
If I didn't want a distro, I'd just go with something like Buildroot, or even more elementary. Yes, this is one of the projects I also have in mind to understand better and with the cross-supporting goal of reducing boot time of a machine that'll eventually run my game engine, with the reference of running said game engine on a n MCU.
But that's not what I want from desktop Linux of a pedigree that'd have potential of replacing my daily driver requirements, which are actually quite difficult to match, but I do have hope.
I agree that it is almost suspicious how quickly it has risen to prominence. There has been a surge of hugely popular amorphous open source projects by single or few maintainers, often created very recently. In my experience, most of the users of Omarchy are inexperienced with Linux, and use it because it doesn't require them to form their own opinions and workflows, which can be both positive and negative.
Things like Omarchy are a boon to Linux because they bring in people that otherwise wouldn't have given it any thought. It's demonstrating what is possible as a little gateway drug. Things like SteamOS are much better at this, but more is better. It's not doing any harm.
The more interesting question is, do people actually want a hyper-opinionated Linux install? Based on the reactions to Omarchy that I've seen, the answer is obviously yes. Broadly, people seem ok with just not using some of the suggested software if the defaults get them most of the way there.
More generally, I would say that configuring one's own Linux installation is not in itself virtuous. It used to be a way to identify people who were "committed" to using it via gatekeeping. The OP says that Omarchy is just DHH "cashing in" on new inexperienced Linux users, but as long as we don't value customizing one's own installation just for the sake of customization (I certainly don't anymore!), why is this a problem?
Summarizes my feeling about this article and the author.
DHH tends to build things for himself first, then share it with the world (sometimes free, sometimes paid) to see if others find value in it too.
Most of those things never become broadly adopted, which is clear from the long list of products 37signals has shut down over the years: Breeze, Writeboard, Backpack, Sortfolio, and others.
But every once in a while, there’s a huge success … like Rails, Basecamp, Hey, and apparently now Omarchy.
I honestly don’t think it’s much more complicated than that. He enjoys building things he personally wants. And when he sees others getting joy from what he built, he gets excited and doubles down.
Linux should be hard and shitty and it should break all the time! What is this newfound obsession with distros that just works and have some great setups and defaults.
Where do we end up if you can just close your laptop lid or copy paste with the same key or or or if even… gasp… the theme is automatically applied across all apps?
DHH? More like literal devil.
No sir! Let me write a blogpost post haste!
Yeah! What a mystery. What could make people install omarchy or pop os over debian, arch or gentoo?
What could possibly be the reason
Here’s a fact - Omarchy opened up Arch to a whole crowd of people that would have never tried Arch given its notorious difficulty to the uninitiated.
There are plenty of strange things that gets publish every day, I don't see why you get hung up on this post.
The idea of enabling proprietary software in the default install is apparently verboten to some, and getting that viewpoint out there helps people understand why Linux on the desktop is where it is.
Was helpful to me. I now know not waste my time.
the poster seems to have skipped over the point that "Omarchy" is just the default configuration of Arch for 37signals internal use, and enthusiasm over it working well caught on, so it's shared as open source.
CachyOS is another set of UI configurations of Arch and is also just handy.
disclaimer: i use both and they work well.
It's a blog post, a medium where people can self-publish their writing for no other purpose than expressing themselves. These things have been around for decades at this point.
Omarchy was my first entry back into desktop Linux since the early 2000s, when I ran enlightenment. The promises of Omarchy are big, and the idea of somebody trying all the tons of available bits of desktop Linux and assembling their favorites is very compelling!
I've since moved to KDE Plasma on that initial Omarchy install, but kept some other parts like the Bash completion system. I would love to get back to having single key sequences to bring up, say, a Claude window, but not enough to set it up in Plasma. If somebody else did it for me though... that's the appeal of Omarchy.
I don't think its suspicious at all. I think it filled a long standing need for some subset of current and on-the-fence Linux users of needing and wanting a really opinionated, well put together set of defaults that you don't really get with a vanilla OOTB experience on most distros.
The popularity of the various dotfiles repos proves that enough, Omarchy just turns that into an automated set up script on top of arch while regular dotfiles repos assume you already know how to, or care enough, to figure out how to install hyprland and all the associated utilities (waybar, launcher menu, wallpaper handling, etc).
Plus, generally, most people grew up using either Windows or macOS which are also very opinionated and I'd argue most users don't actually want to form their own workflows, they'd rather have something already put together to adapt into.
Myself included. Albeit I'm a macOS user, but I genuinely don't really have opinions unless something is seriously annoying, I'll change it, but otherwise I'd much prefer a set of good defaults and I'll just learn how to use them. Most of my work isn't using the operating system itself anyway, it's done within software running on it and that's where I'd rather focus my time.
But yeah, I think the vast majority of people using it are first timers to Linux in general. It attracts these people because it doesn’t ask too much of them. I don’t know why anybody would complain about growing the ecosystem. More people using Linux is always a good thing for the community.
You can easily change most things you don’t like in Omarchy.
If so then that’s your answer. Why isn’t this obvious?
Giving someone a box of parts vs an assembled product is a huge difference. Yes there are some who prefer the box of parts, but they’re an extreme minority.
The out of box experience with Omarchy is highly functional, aesthetically pleasing and challenges users to lean more on keyboard shortcuts than they’d typically be used to. That’s clever because once you’re whizzing around with these shortcuts you feel accomplished, productive, and that generates loyalty towards the distro.
None of this is a bad thing, anything that makes Linux more accessible and interesting is good. Bucking trends that were making Linux harder to adopt or less culturally relevant is good too.
> and _why_ does it have a conference, sponsors, and merchandise? especially when longstanding distros like Debian have struggled with funding and sponsorship for decades?
I agree with the author that this is the thing that mostly gets me about Omarchy: yes, it is fine for you to use Omarchy, but in the end this is just a collection of dotfiles from DHH. We should be investing this money in some other distro that is actually doing some actual work (like packaging programs, maintaining infrastructure, etc.), instead of a hobby project from a millionaire.
Not sinister, but just a simple strategy of a business to increase sales of his products (such as hey.com) as well as pushing his personal preferences (grok) to younger audience masquerading as being done for public good.
It is just repulsive for people who see through this. But I think it is an OK business strategy which may be somewhat successful.
Values of DHH and his businesses on one side and Linux community on the other are not very well aligned, so it will inevitably cause these kind of tensions.
But if the goal is to target younger people who are not part of Linux community yet, then it may work, and that's the play here.
because most of the time there is. We live in a world that is dominated by obnoxious social media influencers and 'taste makers' who push people to the <newest thing> every day. This is the linux version of Mr. Beast lunchables.
Having a conference and corporate sponsorships for what is 500 lines of bash scripting is beyond silly. And like the other half dozen arch based 'desktop reskin disguised as distro' things, when it eventually breaks or stops being supported you'll have a lot of confused people who don't know how to fix it.
I run regular Arch with Niri and Noctalia Shell, which is based on Quick Shell. It is a pretty solid experience. But even with Quick Shell, which has taken a lot of the pain out of closing the gap between traditional DEs and these tiling WMs, it’s still a decent chunk of configuration.
Without it, I’d be doing a ton more configuration with a bar and scripts to display some information. And then those would be hardly functional, since really they’re just showing some stdout from the terminal. If I wanted to actually, say, connect to a new Bluetooth device, I’d still be heading to the terminal to connect.
That gap is what makes Omarchy interesting to me, and presumably to the people who seem to really like it.
Omarchy lets someone install it just like another “real” distribution and get a working OS without having to do hours of configuration and ensuring they have all the additional utilities they’d expect to have.
I think it does kind of have to be a “distro” because the appeal is that you don’t maintain the scripts yourself. You can just install it and get sensible defaults from a fresh install.
There’s nothing stopping Ubuntu, Fedora, or another major distribution from creating something like this. They already have Plasma and GNOME variants that include bundled software and sensible defaults customized from the delivered version of those DEs.
My question for people is whether their objection has to do with Omarchy itself or with the person or people behind it. I get that even without a controversial figure behind it, people might still object to some of the technical decisions behind it. But I find it hard to argue against the idea. It is filling a niche by making alternative WMs like Hyprland more accessible.
If Omarchy is upsetting the Linux establishment as much as this article implies (unclear if this is just a one-off) then it's probably worth a look!
It’s not upsetting anyone other than people who like to argue about inconsequential things on social media.
I actually don’t think it would be as popular without all of the manufactured drama and controversy around. Some people (like the parent comment) are drawn to the controversy and feeling of rebellion.
I bet 99% of people do not care if you use it or not. The other 1% just like arguing about other people’s personal preferences for some reason.
We've seen the same thing play out with Harry Potter for example.
I’d be more inclined to ignore it entirely if I was a blog author.
This is just more perpetuation of the distro fragmentation that doesn’t need to exist.
Then install arch or Cachy or some other Arch based distro and just use the parts you liked.
I am completely disinterested in the author's concerns because Omarchy was useful to me in demonstrating how to compose pieces into a useful whole in a relatively minimalist distribution like Arch. It is much easier to learn with good examples than just only reading DIY reference docs. (And they are good examples even if you dislike the targets of the apps installed - I agree on those points, but they're just not that important)
It feels very strange (and wrong) to me: if there is difficulties in installing something, try to help people instead of packaging the solution with other things that are not related. It feels a bit like if uv was mainly providing their "uvOS" to solve the difficulties of dealing with python packages.
I would guess in typical DHH fashion he would say it is Open Source. And I don't understand where this just Arch + Hyprland installation is coming from?
They have also customised the OS / distro so it install in less than 2 min on a super fast USB. Getting Laptops, both Framework and Dell are now on board, tested on Omarchy so they work out of the box. And so many other tiny things that just make the experience better. I say better but to most consumer, those are expected in the first place.
And this "expectation" people have been waiting for more than a decade.
So the purpose of Omarchy was to get devices quickly set up with some opinionated defaults.
I am so glad I have LLMs now to help me with Linux problems, gone are the years of putting up with curmudgeonly Linux gate keepers like this on IRC just so I could make progress when I was stuck.
I'm not sure why "I browse reddit" is any sort of a valid qualifier upon which to base this decision
but yes otherwise the article is correct, dotfiles != distro
The fact that it takes so much more to put together a Linux distribution is I think something that the Linux ecosystem ought to aspire to change.
1. Based off a common base distro
2. Domain-specific, rather than general-use
3. Includes commercial software
Problem is, some people are really impressed by ricing and that is what has been catching users for that ""distro""
I'm pretty sure the fans of minimalism/t distros or just plain bare setups aren't really hyping that much. The author is right in that it's just an opinionated layer on top of Arch
We need Linux to win period. I don't care if it's called Distro, gist of envfiles, or a tank for gods sake. I want the market share for linux rather than macOs and Windows.
"omarchy install will include a bunch of proprietary software, including... what are we doing?? these are not the kinds of packages that any sane distro would ship to its users" - Ye this is great software. You know what is not good? when you download a distro that only has open source software and your codecs doesn't work, then that person just install windows again (true story many of my friends went through that). So please, don't tell people to skip stuff just because you dislike it
"... install a real distribution - not some guy's personal dotfiles." "the entire 'omarchy distribution' amounts to little more than Arch linux" Your own statements contradict each other.
I for one really liked the out-of-box Omarchy experience and wouldn't know the first thing right now about how to customize arch so that it feels the same as Omarchy. Maybe it's trivial? But honestly I don't care I just like Omarchy's default opinion design way better than any other distro I've tried so far.
Omarchy really has excellent defaults and generally development is always moving in the right direction.
There aren’t really any rules to what to find this or not. Just because something is more opinionated than other solutions doesn’t mean it’s invalid.
In fact, I would say that that’s the primary reason people gravitate towards Omarchy. Many developers coming from the competing operating systems want stuff that just works out of the box, including proprietary software!
If you don’t like it, just ignore it and move on. I thought we were past this “I dislike this thing on the internet therefore everyone who likes it is wrong” phase of the internet. It’s also discourse like this that specifically discourages people from trying Linux.
And I know Omarchy is not the only one out there doing something similar, and that there is a spectrum. It is not a problem. The problem is not the existence of the spectrum, the problem is that at some point, we should just call a cat a cat instead of arguing "well, being a cat is a spectrum, so every year we can call a new thing in the adjacent spectrum a cat and pretend it has all the quality one would expect from a cat".
Frequently the desktop app and the safari extension won't be in sync and missing a recently added password, or doesn't show up on my other devices hours later. I still have no idea how the extension vs desktop app actually work together, or if they do at all.
Sometimes 1password (safari extension) is "locked" - but the desktop app isn't locked? and No amount of clicking the little 1password icon, that's supposed to unlock it does anything. Just a completely no-op button. Quitting safari _and_ the desktop app seems to be what's required to fix it.
I've been thinking about just moving back to native macOS keychain, but I haven't bothered to check on linux+windows support.
it's not a crime to use someone else's config. i have before, saves time. but the ratio to overall work here to the attention this thing has received is strange. it reminds me a lot of 'linux youtubers' who review distros and 90% of what they talk about is the default WM. very much a skin-deep idea of what a linux distro is
The different from a "set of dot files" is that you can download a full installation image.
What?? Could someone tell me where I can buy hardware as good as a MBP? Genuinely I’d love this, it would be like Christmas had come early!
intel panther lake changed the game.
both because as I said there's no distinction with a project like this, and I'll give you a technical example for this. The manual which I briefly read through says this on the monitor configuration:
"Omarchy assumes you're running on a 2x-capable retina-class display by default[...] It's what you'd want to run on a 27" 5K Apple Studio Display [...] But if you're not running a display with a PPI of 218 or above, you'll want to change the monitor settings ..."
then it proceeds to tell you what config files to edit by hand. Monitors with that PPI have a market share of <2%. This isn't a system for people who want things out of the box, it's his personal dotfiles that people use because they know his name. It's like buying Jordan sneakers and thinking they'll make you great at basketball, it's an influencer product. How many people, given that the appeal is to not read anything, have consulted that part of the manual? If this was a nobody's repo it'd have 10 stars and people would ask why the fonts look like crap.
If you want stuff working out of the box for non-technical people give them an Ubuntu LTS release, not window managers on release version 0.x. maintained by people in a discord
As a fan of boring Dell laptops/desktops and owner of many, I can tell you they have been well supported in every distro I have tried (Debian, Fedora, Arch, SUSE)
But yes the Safari 1Password extension constantly shits The bed.
I don't think it changes anything about what I was saying. If indeed dhh helped find a way to install hyprland more easily but failed to also provide a standalone recipe, that does not sound like a good practice to me.
But the source code is public, you can extract the relevant scripts from the repo: https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy