alt Hacker NewsOmarchy Is Not A Distro
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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!
I agree with the author's general sentiment, but I would give Omarchy credit for some design features that I find either really innovative or well executed.
I find the launch menu the most interesting I've seen out of any desktop environment / OS. It puts easy access to your apps front and center and above esthetics, and yet it still looks great. It's not a sane request, but I'd love to be able to swap the launcher/start menu in another DE for a fully customizable version of that.
Omarchy also has a very smooth way to 'install' web apps. There exist packages that do that for you, but I've tested several and wouldn't recommend any of them. They're bloated (this should really only be a couple lines of bash, like Omarchy's [0]), some use web views (I really want an actual browser under the hood so I can have my extensions), and all that I've tested leave litter on your machine after removing apps or the software. I find web apps as .desktop files so useful that I'm actually using a hacky DIY script now (which I'm considering releasing under GPL if I ever find time to clean it up).
Also, whether you're a beginner or a pro, having a sane starting config for Hyprland is just convenient. Which tells you something about it imho. My conclusion would be similar to the OP's, if you're Omarchy-curious, try Cosmic on your distro of choice. Or at least a cleaned up version with the most egregious personal preferences (like a global keybind for opening Twitter/X) removed, if anybody cares to maintain that.
[0] https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/blob/dev/bin/omarchy-web...
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 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.
> 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
Omarchy is more like Kubuntu. Some config scripts and a few additional packages on top of another distribution.
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.
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.
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
I'm old, is "ricing" (along with "ricer", "rice burners", "rice rockets", etc.) no longer racist?
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Omarchy is the best Linux desktop experience I’ve ever had
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 tried, felt same. its just ricing.
This is a little cringe, it's fine you don't like it, dont use it. There have been other distros based on arch which are also mostly just rices. I've never seen people complain about them, but Omarchy is different, probably because DHH is involved.
I tried Omarchy and thought it was decent, I liked a lot of the settings and visuals.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
If this is the price to pay for adoption I’m ok with 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.
If CachyOS or Kubuntu are distros why isn't Omarchy? There's tons of "distros" that piggyback on others...
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.
> 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!
That’s like saying Ubuntu isn’t a distro as it’s “just Debian”. Yes but also: no.
> my eyes roll out of my head
Summarizes my feeling about this article and the author.
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.
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
What a strange thing to publish.. just don't use it if you don't like it? What is this even attempting to do?
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!
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.
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.
Eh this just feels like gatekeeping to me.
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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.
I'm still on X :laugh:
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.