alt Hacker NewsWe 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.
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The author of the blog post makes valid criticisms, I remember when Ubuntu had a shortcut for Amazon in the default desktop installation because they had a sponsorship with Amazon and people rightfully criticized the distro for it. The author is doing the same for DHH promoting things like Grok/Hey/X. Also I am sure if any distro started shipping things like NordVPN in the default installation people would complain.
> 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.
>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.
> then there has to be something sinister afoot.
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.
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True! I love it when I buy a computer pre-installed with windows and it has a bunch of extra software bundled in like norton antivirus, dropbox, and opera. Plus the OEM makes money and I get a bunch of free apps. It's a win win. I hope the author of omarchy gets sponsor money for including nordvpn, spotify, and 1password. I love seeing linux become more conventionally attractive and steer in the direction of windows and macos because they're popular so linux will be more popular. Everything should be for everyone.