We seem to have arrived at a set of assumptions that states that if a large number of people like something that we don’t, or don’t subscribe to some cultural norms that we doggedly adhere to, then there has to be something sinister afoot.
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.
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.
Having tried both Omakub and Omarchy I think Omakub is the more interesting approach, and it certainly matches the OP's description - just a set of scripts and defaults applied to a standard Ubuntu.
I'd love to see a bunch of similar projects based on slackware, debian, suse or whatever.
I think most current distros/DE's dump "everything and the kitchen sink" at the user leaving him or her to finish the setup themselves. They stop short of actually presenting a good, unified experience. That's how it has been for ages of course, and Omakub is basically a "distro skin" that IMO has been lacking from distros all this time.
Picking a set of sensible default apps and making them 100% integrated and well documented is just nice. Ubuntu with Omakub just feels more like a finished OS than Ubuntu itself does.
Omarchy on the other hand is as much a distribution as most other popular distributions. Sure, based on arch, but if that disqualifies it then most distros are "not distros" all of a sudden. So I call Omarchy a distro.
I get why it exists and I use it for convenience since I like Arch anyway - but I would actually have preferred a few more variants on omakub, personally.
Usually these types of articles are written about things that challenge status quos. I remember reading a lot about Ruby on Rails in the same vein "ruby isn't a real language", "rails is just a collection of scripts", and "you can't build real web apps with it."
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!
> If Omarchy is upsetting the Linux establishment as much as this article implies
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.
The upset is due to the imbalance between what omarchy really is and the buzz around it. When your “distro” could be a bash script on a vanilla arch install, is it really worth making a distro?
This is just more perpetuation of the distro fragmentation that doesn’t need to exist.
I've tried to setup Arch with Hyprland like 3 times on my own and with the most popular dot files. It was terrible, frustrating and things broke all the time. Omarchy fixed that and I can't recommend it enough.
I’ve done both ultimately doing it raw helped me figure out why my setup and the omarchy attempt failed, (my cpu integrated graphics were rendering and passing the result to my 3090 not using the card at all) but I think anything that elevates Linux and solves the endless choices for people who don’t enjoy engaging with that is a good thing.
Did dhh provide a recipe to install hyprland properly without having to install a full "distribution"? (I don't know, it's a real question)
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.
>Did dhh provide a recipe to install hyprland properly without having to install a full "distribution"? (I don't know, it's a real question)
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.
> 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.
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)
He built it for himself first, posting frequently about it on X. Once it reached a point of stability, he announced that Basecamp was starting to transition it's employees from macOS to it.
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.
I was just talking about my experience. I don't think DHH's entire goal was only to help people install Hyprland, it's weird that you're getting this idea.
The author's complaint is that omarchy is basically a set of ricing on top of arch. I can grok that
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
I recommend installing Omarchy and playing with it. Read through the Omarchy repo to see how the things you liked and disliked were set up.
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)
>if you're new to Linux, skip omarchy and install a real distribution
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 think most of the people who use the term in the context of Linux desktops don't know the term's origin (or at least don't stop to think about it), so the possibility of it being racist never occurs to them.
By your reasoning of what is or is not a distribution, Ubuntu is not a distribution. After all, it’s just opinionated Debian. The vast majority of distributions are, by your logic, not distributions. I’m okay with this, but that isn’t how the word is commonly used.
A little off topic but my position is that a Linux distribution ought to be a series of build options, package selection and configuration. Ultimately, you should be able to do this in a few files.
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.
"if you're new to Linux, skip omarchy..."
I've been using linux for 20+ years. I used to spend way too much time ricing my system when I was young. I don't have time for that now. I installed Omarchy, and I like 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.
This article gives me the feeling of someone arguing that the Thai restaurant I like isn’t serving real Thai food. They might even be right, but I don’t know because I don’t care. I like the food.
Back to the article, they then list a bunch of things that I think are supposed to be negatives, but includes things like some shortcuts and some software I already use pre-installed.
if we depended on you no one would use linux then. This is the type of garbage mentality that we need OUT this community.
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
Quality in general seems to be going downhill, too.
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.
For those here that are old enough to remember Knoppix I think there are some similar things happening here. There were similar theads about Knoppix not being a distro for those who installed to their hdd using the live cd. But there was also clear demand for what it offered.
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.
Strongly disagree with this post. And I am not a DHH fan.
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.
I’m sorry, but what is the actual definition of a distro? What makes Omarchy different than, say, Cachy which is also an opinionated DE and set of packages on top of Arch.
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.
I don't think the discussion about "is it a distribution or not" is very interesting, but I think the discussion about "should we make clear that this _thing_ is just a bunch of config files rather than the usual work one would expect behind what was traditionally called linux distributions".
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".
the DHH defense league is incapable of explaining why a collection of dotfiles needed sponsorship from CloudFlare as opposed to like... if anything relevant to your 'unixporn' interests, maybe the bougie tiling WM it uses instead?
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
Words have meaning, sure I get that. The rest is silly. Omarchy was built for DHH and Basecamp. It's MIT. Noone is forcing anyone to use someone's "shitty dotfiles" unless you work at Basecamp.
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.
Whether we call it a distribution or not is really a matter of semantics.
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?
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.
I think they should both not use it and talk about why so that we can get a clearer picture of the diversity of Linux users out there.
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.
well, it is in the "thoughts" section of the author's website. maybe it doesn't belong on HN, but the person who posted it is not the author, so take it up with them. anyway, i agree with most/all of the complaints but if a valuable point were to be made it is probably the funding point. why does this need money?
To your point, I don't think the complaining and ranting by the poster makes sense, given what was ignored before the ranting began.
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.
Realistically, polarizing figures like DHH will have complaints pointed at their work for reasons other than the work itself. And when the complaints are grounded they’ll often be of higher amplitude than otherwise.
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.
Well, this "not distro" software that takes over your whole computer when you boot the ISO and install it has been the greatest out-of-the box Linux experience for me, and has introduced me to the best new way of using an operating system since I first installed a Linux distro ~20 years ago.
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.
FYI, most meals that are DISTRibuted through different convenient means are "prepared".
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.
It is understandable to be frustrated at a project without technical merit gaining so much traction when, as in the author's words, "longstanding distros like Debian have struggled with funding and sponsorship for decades". However, I do feel the author fails to come up with any conclusion as to why there is such a disparity between interest in traditional distributions and this rice.
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.
Its rise is not suspicious to me at all, the author has tremendous reach influence in the developer community, that drives adoption easily.
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.
> almost suspicious how quickly it has risen to prominence.
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.
DHH has an enormous following and is extremely influential. I don’t think it’s surprising that it gained popularity so quickly. He’s really good at shamelessly plugging his work (as well I hope he should be).
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.
Does it allow newbies to install it and have something like the Apple “it just works” experience?
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.
It also opened up trying a tiling WM to a whole crowd of people that never would have bothered. To the uninitiated it's not exactly easy to get hyprland + all the extra utilities for status bar, menu, wallpaper, theming, etc. running. Then figuring out how their individual configs work, then making it look good on top of that. It's a ton of effort.
Omarchy!! shipping a window manager with defaults and or a terminal with a config - what an unspeakable sin.
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?
Having literal billionaire best buds backing the project probably helps one gain traction, no? Toss in a dash of weird culture war bullshit, and… well. Distro popularity isn’t exactly a meritocratic system.
We seem to have arrived at a set of assumptions that states that if a large number of people like something that we don’t, or don’t subscribe to some cultural norms that we doggedly adhere to, then there has to be something sinister afoot.
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.
>then there has to be something sinister afoot.
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.
Having tried both Omakub and Omarchy I think Omakub is the more interesting approach, and it certainly matches the OP's description - just a set of scripts and defaults applied to a standard Ubuntu.
I'd love to see a bunch of similar projects based on slackware, debian, suse or whatever.
I think most current distros/DE's dump "everything and the kitchen sink" at the user leaving him or her to finish the setup themselves. They stop short of actually presenting a good, unified experience. That's how it has been for ages of course, and Omakub is basically a "distro skin" that IMO has been lacking from distros all this time.
Picking a set of sensible default apps and making them 100% integrated and well documented is just nice. Ubuntu with Omakub just feels more like a finished OS than Ubuntu itself does.
Omarchy on the other hand is as much a distribution as most other popular distributions. Sure, based on arch, but if that disqualifies it then most distros are "not distros" all of a sudden. So I call Omarchy a distro.
I get why it exists and I use it for convenience since I like Arch anyway - but I would actually have preferred a few more variants on omakub, personally.
Usually these types of articles are written about things that challenge status quos. I remember reading a lot about Ruby on Rails in the same vein "ruby isn't a real language", "rails is just a collection of scripts", and "you can't build real web apps with it."
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!
> If Omarchy is upsetting the Linux establishment as much as this article implies
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.
The upset is due to the imbalance between what omarchy really is and the buzz around it. When your “distro” could be a bash script on a vanilla arch install, is it really worth making a distro?
This is just more perpetuation of the distro fragmentation that doesn’t need to exist.
I've tried to setup Arch with Hyprland like 3 times on my own and with the most popular dot files. It was terrible, frustrating and things broke all the time. Omarchy fixed that and I can't recommend it enough.
I’ve done both ultimately doing it raw helped me figure out why my setup and the omarchy attempt failed, (my cpu integrated graphics were rendering and passing the result to my 3090 not using the card at all) but I think anything that elevates Linux and solves the endless choices for people who don’t enjoy engaging with that is a good thing.
Did dhh provide a recipe to install hyprland properly without having to install a full "distribution"? (I don't know, it's a real question)
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.
>Did dhh provide a recipe to install hyprland properly without having to install a full "distribution"? (I don't know, it's a real question)
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.
> 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.
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)
If I remember it correctly Omarchy started as an in-house alternative to macOS in one of DHHs companies. And was then released to the public.
So the purpose of Omarchy was to get devices quickly set up with some opinionated defaults.
He built it for himself first, posting frequently about it on X. Once it reached a point of stability, he announced that Basecamp was starting to transition it's employees from macOS to it.
So, is the answer "no"?
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.
The answer is: no, solving your problem was not the goal of the project.
But the source code is public, you can extract the relevant scripts from the repo: https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy
I was just talking about my experience. I don't think DHH's entire goal was only to help people install Hyprland, it's weird that you're getting this idea.
> as a longtime frequenter of r/unixporn, it was immediately apparent to me that omarchy is not a linux distribution in any traditional sense
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 author's complaint is that omarchy is basically a set of ricing on top of arch. I can grok that
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
I recommend installing Omarchy and playing with it. Read through the Omarchy repo to see how the things you liked and disliked were set up.
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)
An opinionated person has different opinions than a different opinionated person
>if you're new to Linux, skip omarchy and install a real distribution
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.
Omarchy is more like Kubuntu. Some config scripts and a few additional packages on top of another distribution.
I'm old, is "ricing" (along with "ricer", "rice burners", "rice rockets", etc.) no longer racist?
I think most of the people who use the term in the context of Linux desktops don't know the term's origin (or at least don't stop to think about it), so the possibility of it being racist never occurs to them.
By your reasoning of what is or is not a distribution, Ubuntu is not a distribution. After all, it’s just opinionated Debian. The vast majority of distributions are, by your logic, not distributions. I’m okay with this, but that isn’t how the word is commonly used.
Seems like the three criteria I'm reading could apply to many other "distros"
1. Based off a common base distro
2. Domain-specific, rather than general-use
3. Includes commercial software
The new quickshell based omarchy shell is pretty excellent foundation already, I’m very excited for it to be released on omarchy 4.0.
Omarchy really has excellent defaults and generally development is always moving in the right direction.
A little off topic but my position is that a Linux distribution ought to be a series of build options, package selection and configuration. Ultimately, you should be able to do this in a few files.
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.
"if you're new to Linux, skip omarchy..." I've been using linux for 20+ years. I used to spend way too much time ricing my system when I was young. I don't have time for that now. I installed Omarchy, and I like 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.
by author's logic, is Ubuntu not a distro since its based on Debian? i don't understand what author is trying to say here.
Omarchy is the best Linux desktop experience I’ve ever had
This article gives me the feeling of someone arguing that the Thai restaurant I like isn’t serving real Thai food. They might even be right, but I don’t know because I don’t care. I like the food.
Back to the article, they then list a bunch of things that I think are supposed to be negatives, but includes things like some shortcuts and some software I already use pre-installed.
So let’s grant that the title is true. So what?
if we depended on you no one would use linux then. This is the type of garbage mentality that we need OUT this community.
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
I mean... Yeah, it's a curated set of dotfiles that one guy spent a while tuning to his liking.
I don't use it, but I figure it's just a matter of most people being too lazy to polish up their own equivalent, so they'll use someone else's.
I tried, felt same. its just ricing.
FWIW, 1Password is pretty great.
It was better when it was still a native app and not this Electron nonsense.
Quality in general seems to be going downhill, too.
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.
Haters gonna hate.
Just skim the rest of the blog posts…
For those here that are old enough to remember Knoppix I think there are some similar things happening here. There were similar theads about Knoppix not being a distro for those who installed to their hdd using the live cd. But there was also clear demand for what it offered.
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.
Strongly disagree with this post. And I am not a DHH fan.
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.
I’m sorry, but what is the actual definition of a distro? What makes Omarchy different than, say, Cachy which is also an opinionated DE and set of packages on top of Arch.
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.
I don't think the discussion about "is it a distribution or not" is very interesting, but I think the discussion about "should we make clear that this _thing_ is just a bunch of config files rather than the usual work one would expect behind what was traditionally called linux distributions".
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".
It's fine that it exists. But a package of customizations is not a distribution. Yes, the definition is fuzzy, but this is clearly not it.
the DHH defense league is incapable of explaining why a collection of dotfiles needed sponsorship from CloudFlare as opposed to like... if anything relevant to your 'unixporn' interests, maybe the bougie tiling WM it uses instead?
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
> apple's hardware lead & overall design philosophy is falling apart
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!
https://frame.work/laptop13pro :)
intel panther lake changed the game.
Words have meaning, sure I get that. The rest is silly. Omarchy was built for DHH and Basecamp. It's MIT. Noone is forcing anyone to use someone's "shitty dotfiles" unless you work at Basecamp.
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.
That’s like saying Ubuntu isn’t a distro as it’s “just Debian”. Yes but also: no.
Ubuntu ships & maintains packages, for one thing -- and doesn't have hyper-personal default keybinds, for another.
Whether we call it a distribution or not is really a matter of semantics.
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?
“Hyper-opinionated” and “good OOB experience” are orthogonal to each other.
I love Omarchy
The post seems to be missing an important point…
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.
What a strange thing to publish.. just don't use it if you don't like it? What is this even attempting to do?
What's wrong with voicing opinion on the Internet? It's a personal blog, you don't have to read it if you don't like it.
There are plenty of strange things that gets publish every day, I don't see why you get hung up on this post.
I think they should both not use it and talk about why so that we can get a clearer picture of the diversity of Linux users out there.
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.
Everyone has the urge to criticize what they don't like, and it looks like you are no exception... :)
well, it is in the "thoughts" section of the author's website. maybe it doesn't belong on HN, but the person who posted it is not the author, so take it up with them. anyway, i agree with most/all of the complaints but if a valuable point were to be made it is probably the funding point. why does this need money?
> maybe it doesn't belong on HN
Was helpful to me. I now know not waste my time.
It's a critique of Omarchy.
To your point, I don't think the complaining and ranting by the poster makes sense, given what was ignored before the ranting began.
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.
Realistically, polarizing figures like DHH will have complaints pointed at their work for reasons other than the work itself. And when the complaints are grounded they’ll often be of higher amplitude than otherwise.
> What is this even attempting to do?
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.
> my eyes roll out of my head
Summarizes my feeling about this article and the author.
Well, this "not distro" software that takes over your whole computer when you boot the ISO and install it has been the greatest out-of-the box Linux experience for me, and has introduced me to the best new way of using an operating system since I first installed a Linux distro ~20 years ago.
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.
The instructions on the back of the prepared meal box is not a cookbook.
This is not a judgement of using a prepared meal box.
FYI, most meals that are DISTRibuted through different convenient means are "prepared".
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.
It is understandable to be frustrated at a project without technical merit gaining so much traction when, as in the author's words, "longstanding distros like Debian have struggled with funding and sponsorship for decades". However, I do feel the author fails to come up with any conclusion as to why there is such a disparity between interest in traditional distributions and this rice.
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.
Its rise is not suspicious to me at all, the author has tremendous reach influence in the developer community, that drives adoption easily.
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.
> almost suspicious how quickly it has risen to prominence.
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.
DHH has an enormous following and is extremely influential. I don’t think it’s surprising that it gained popularity so quickly. He’s really good at shamelessly plugging his work (as well I hope he should be).
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.
Does it allow newbies to install it and have something like the Apple “it just works” experience?
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.
So to be clear - distros used by experienced Linux users are better than distros preferred by non-experienced?
You can easily change most things you don’t like in Omarchy.
Pretty clear by the other opinions this author has on his “blog” that he dislikes DHH for more than just the Omarchy distribution.
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.
It also opened up trying a tiling WM to a whole crowd of people that never would have bothered. To the uninitiated it's not exactly easy to get hyprland + all the extra utilities for status bar, menu, wallpaper, theming, etc. running. Then figuring out how their individual configs work, then making it look good on top of that. It's a ton of effort.
Eh this just feels like gatekeeping to me.
Omarchy!! shipping a window manager with defaults and or a terminal with a config - what an unspeakable sin.
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!
The author is so close. “decades of debian and it never got any traction. Why?“
Yeah! What a mystery. What could make people install omarchy or pop os over debian, arch or gentoo?
What could possibly be the reason
Having literal billionaire best buds backing the project probably helps one gain traction, no? Toss in a dash of weird culture war bullshit, and… well. Distro popularity isn’t exactly a meritocratic system.
Yeah Linux will be shitty and break all the time if it doesn’t come preinstalled with Brave and a shortcut to open Grok.
I'm still on X :laugh: