It basically is opinionated dotfiles and a few scripts, though that's a bit of a reductive take.

The killer feature of Omarchy is how accessible and streamlined it is. You can set up your own arch+hypr environment in a weekend of tweaking and fiddling assuming basic Linux competency, or you can use Omarchy and get where you want to be in 10 minutes with no tweaking or fiddling.

If you want is the outcome of the fiddling, then Omarchy is a great choice. If you want is fun of the fiddling process, then it's not for you.

▲ nickjj 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm surprised so many people who want to use Arch aren't in it for the fiddling.

I've had publicly installable dotfiles with a "1 command and ~5 minutes later" you have your development environment set up for a few years now. It is command line focused since my main box is running WSL 2 with Arch Linux. The script works for Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and macOS since I use a work laptop that's running a MBP.

It was a lot of fun building things up and learning about the process as I went.

When I got a laptop to install native Linux a little while back, Omarchy was just coming out and I figured ok since I will want a solution to trick out a window manager / DE I'll want more than command line tools so I took a look.

I ended up avoiding it for a few reasons but the main one was I don't want to ask for permission or maintain a fork to deviate from the Omarchy defaults that cannot be customized without a fork.

I love Rails and the philosophy behind it but I don't think the same model applies to something as intimate and personal as your OS. Your OS is more like a custom application made for you, especially if you're going down the Arch (or Linux in general) route.

▲ marginalia_nu 4 days ago | parent [-]

If you feel it's not for you, then it's probably not for you.

I don't think Omarchy is or needs to be for everyone. Its recipe for success is likely that it's catering to a fairly particular archetype that's generally overlooked by most distributions and OS vendors, and not trying to be or do anything else.

▲ nickjj 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think distributions or OS vendors focus on that because imagine the outrage if you installed Windows and it pre-installed Zoom, Spotify and 80 other apps for you out of the box.

I think it's popular because DHH turned dotfiles into a product and it's being marketed as a distro. Arch + (Hyprland, Waybar, Walker and Mako) are all really popular and standlone tools that make up a reasonable looking desktop environment which Omarchy happens to use too.

I have nothing against it. If it gets more people using Linux, that is a huge win. I just find it fasinating to see it from the outside.

▲ marginalia_nu 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think this is a bit reductive. I came from using basically the same configuration, configured piecemeal, and migrated to Omarchy because I really enjoy the cohesiveness of the experience.

The bundled software aspect is also kinda exaggerated. It almost entirely consists of app launchers for a few chrome-based PWAs. There's like no software to speak off, it's just a .desktop-file you can remove if you don't want it (there's even a menu for that).

It's arguably more of a demo of Omarchy's excellent PWA tooling than anything else, where you can create your own PWAs with a simple TUI that blend seamlessly into the rest of the system.

This is the supposed bloatware looks like

  $ cat ~/.local/user/applications/HEY.desktop
  [Desktop Entry]
  Version=1.0
  Name=HEY
  Comment=HEY
  Exec=omarchy-launch-webapp "https://app.hey.com"
  Terminal=false
  Type=Application
  Icon=/home/user/.local/share/applications/icons/HEY.png
  StartupNotify=true

	▲	nickjj 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's more than the PWAs. There's: https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/blob/master/install/omar... https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/blob/master/install/omar... There's around 180 packages being installed, most of which are considered base packages. 1password and tons upon tons of other apps and tools.

▲ OJFord 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thousands of people share their dotfiles though, there's just no need for it to be its own Arch-derivative distribution. Could've just been 'here are my dotfiles, works best on Arch'.

▲

marginalia_nu 4 days ago | parent [-]

I came from doing that that before switching to Omarchy and it really is not the same.

A lot of "other people's dotfiles" have issues, and often just a few too many anime waifus bundled. That's fine I guess, but it's not what I'm looking for in a WM.

The fact that DHH's managed to rally a community to participate and maintain Omarchy is also a big part of it. If you have an issue, other people will have that issue, and quickly work together to find a fix. There's also a discord full of people running your exact setup you can exchange experiences with.

	▲	OJFord 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not at all discounting the value of rallying a community around one configuration - I just think dotfiles could have been the distribution mechanism, and it would be as valuable given the same community around it.