omarchy is not a distro

omarchy is DHH's latest infatuation - omarchy describes itself like so: > Omarchy is a beautiful, modern & opinionated Linux distribution by DHH. as a longtime frequenter of r/unixporn, it was immediately apparent to me that omarchy is not a linux distribution in any traditional sense -- in fact, the entire "omarchy distribution" amounts to little more than Arch linux + DHH's personal dotfiles. the whole thing should probably just be a few gists. ultimately i think that any interest Linux desktops is a good thing, but i take serious issue with omarchy's posturing -- _why_ is omarchy such a huge focus of DHH's? 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 think there are 3 things going on here: 1. the advent of LLMs has made unix ricing orders of magnitude easier & more broadly interesting 2. apple's hardware lead & overall design philosophy is falling apart 3. DHH realized this, and is cashing in on a wave of new, inexperienced users looking for a cool looking Linux distribution a hyper-configured Linux install is, necessarily, hyper-personal. if you install omarchy, you are not installing a Linux distribution - you are installing Arch Linux plus a huge glut of DHH's personal preferences.

~~example time~~

omarchy includes a window manager called hyprland -- here are a few preconfigured keybinds that come from omarchy: SUPER + SHIFT + ALT + A: opens "https://grok.com" SUPER + SHIFT + C: opens "https://app.hey.com/calendar/weeks/" SUPER + SHIFT + E: opens "https://app.hey.com" SUPER + SHIFT + ALT + X: opens "https://x.com/compose/post" default keybinds to open... grok? the X post dialogue? hey.com? reeeeeally? and somehow, the pre-installed applications list is even worse. your default omarchy install will include a bunch of proprietary software, including: * 1password * claude-code * spotify * typora and dozens of preloaded scripts to install such refuse as: * brave browser * dropbox * nordvpn (lol) ... what are we doing?? these are not the kinds of packages that any sane distro would "ship" to its users. and i am using the term "ship" generously here, because omarchy doesn't "ship" _any_ packages - it relies entirely on Arch and the AUR. and one last thing that's personally offensive to me: a 37-line default ghostty config shipping a default config for a terminal that's designed to be usable without any configuration... * my eyes roll out of my head * ... if you're new to Linux, skip omarchy and install a real distribution - not some guy's personal dotfiles. if i wanted shitware, i'd just install Windows. ~ jes