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Omarchy Is Not A Distro

abyss.fish

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Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#21

Post by hokumguru »

poly2it wrote: post #11

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 suspic…

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#22

Post by api »

poly2it wrote: post #11

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 suspic…

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#25

Post by epistasis »

awesan wrote: post #2

What a strange thing to publish.. just don't use it if you don't like it? What is this even attempting to do?

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#26

Post by maxlin »

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#27

Post by tiffanyh »

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#28

Post by goosejuice »

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#29

Post by yuters »

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.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#30

Post by cwillu »

hokumguru wrote: post #13

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 develop…

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.
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