Omarchy Is Not A Distro • Hacker News Board

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#151

Post by yuters » Sun, May 24, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

cauch wrote: post #150

yuters wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they provide a half-furnished house and also say "hey, it comes with a microwave because I know how to fix a microwave. If you want me to fix a microwave without having to have the whole house, do it yourself, I don't know how to do that", You're still misattributing the reason I like Omarchy to DHH's reason of making Omarchy.

Incorrect. I did not say "I want to sell half-furnished houses because I want to fix microwaves", I said "Hey, it comes with a microwave ...". I'm not saying Omarchy is done by people who don't know what they are doing because they created a distribution to fix hyprland. I'm saying Omarchy is done by people who don't know what they are doing because despite having a fix to hyprland, they don't act with it like an adu…

You're suggesting that because the system doesn't offer a standalone recipe to setup Hyprland, implying that everything else it does include and does better than anything else is not a standalone package also, it's silly and amateurish and they don't know what they are doing. You can try and convince me all you want, but that is not a point of view I could ever get behind, sorry.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#152

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sun, May 24, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

RandomGerm4n wrote: post #121

Even though I wouldn't really use something like that myself, I actually think it's a good thing when people share their dotfiles with others. Whether you call it a “distribution” or not is basically irrelevant, and I don't understand all the fuss about it. However I would still generally advise against using Omarchy because the maintainer does not seem to place any importance on security. For example the default fir…

> For example the default firewall configuration leaves the SSH port open and the number of failed login and sudo attempts before a timeout has been unnecessarily increased.

Leaving SSH exposed is bad if password auth is enabled. Otherwise, under what threat model is either of these a problem?

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#153

Post by JCattheATM » Sun, May 24, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

hkpack wrote: post #93

wrren wrote: post #43

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…

> 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 h…

[flagged]

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#154

Post by JCattheATM » Sun, May 24, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

least wrote: post #100

Barrin92 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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 resk…

No Linux distribution offers a good out-of-the-box experience with anything outside of XFCE, GNOME, or KDE Plasma. On the other end, these alternative WMs lack all of the shell features that people expect from a desktop experience. I run regular Arch with Niri and Noctalia Shell, which is based on Quick Shell. It is a pretty solid experience. But even with Quick Shell, which has taken a lot of the pain out of closing…

> I think it does kind of have to be a “distro” because the appeal is that you don’t maintain the scripts yourself.

It's not a distro because you could overwrite everything by downloading someone else's dotfiles in a few minutes. It's purely just a set of configs.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#155

Post by cauch » Sun, May 24, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

yuters wrote: post #151

cauch wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. I did not say "I want to sell half-furnished houses because I want to fix microwaves", I said "Hey, it comes with a microwave ...". I'm not saying Omarchy is done by people who don't know what they are doing because they created a distribution to fix hyprland. I'm saying Omarchy is done by people who don't know what they are doing because despite having a fix to hyprland, they don't act with it like an adu…

You're suggesting that because the system doesn't offer a standalone recipe to setup Hyprland, implying that everything else it does include and does better than anything else is not a standalone package also, it's silly and amateurish and they don't know what they are doing. You can try and convince me all you want, but that is not a point of view I could ever get behind, sorry.

I did not say "despite having a fix to hyprland, they don't offer a standalone recipe", I'm referring to the whole behavior: how it is presented, how it is hyped, how there is its own conference, its own merchandising, ... When it comes to hyprland, there is this childish attitude of "people do what they want, extract it from the source yourself" when people are legitimately surprised on how the thing was handled.

If it was presented as "Hey, we know it's just some scripts, we don't do the same kind of work that traditional distributions do. We still call it a distribution, but don't hesitate to support Arch instead who is doing the hard work for us", it would be different. But it is apparently not what is done (based on what I've read on the subject in the meanwhile).

What I'm saying is obviously not as simplistic as how you summarized it. It looks like you are just upset that someone may see bad signs in the way this distribution (or whatever one wants to call it) is handled. That's fine, I'm not forcing you to not use it, the same way I'm not forcing anyone to not use anything that is overhyped.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#156

Post by yuters » Sun, May 24, 2026, 11:51 PM UTC

cauch wrote: post #155

yuters wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting that because the system doesn't offer a standalone recipe to setup Hyprland, implying that everything else it does include and does better than anything else is not a standalone package also, it's silly and amateurish and they don't know what they are doing. You can try and convince me all you want, but that is not a point of view I could ever get behind, sorry.

I did not say "despite having a fix to hyprland, they don't offer a standalone recipe", I'm referring to the whole behavior: how it is presented, how it is hyped, how there is its own conference, its own merchandising, ... When it comes to hyprland, there is this childish attitude of "people do what they want, extract it from the source yourself" when people are legitimately surprised on how the thing was handled. If…

> I did not say "despite having a fix to hyprland, they don't offer a standalone recipe",

You said this:

> Did dhh provide a recipe to install hyprland properly without having to install a full "distribution"? (I don't know, it's a real question)

> It feels very strange (and wrong) to me: if there is difficulties in installing something, try to help people instead of packaging the solution with other things that are not related.

And this:

> If indeed dhh helped find a way to install hyprland more easily but failed to also provide a standalone recipe, that does not sound like a good practice to me.

I understand your overall point now that you took the time to explain a bit more, and it is valid criticism. But it is not "obvious" what you were saying. Based on the replies you've got, I see that I'm not alone to think this. You might want to look inward into why that is.

Not upset by the way, just responding in kind.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#157

Post by least » Sun, May 24, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

JCattheATM wrote: post #154

least wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Linux distribution offers a good out-of-the-box experience with anything outside of XFCE, GNOME, or KDE Plasma. On the other end, these alternative WMs lack all of the shell features that people expect from a desktop experience. I run regular Arch with Niri and Noctalia Shell, which is based on Quick Shell. It is a pretty solid experience. But even with Quick Shell, which has taken a lot of the pain out of closing…

> I think it does kind of have to be a “distro” because the appeal is that you don’t maintain the scripts yourself. It's not a distro because you could overwrite everything by downloading someone else's dotfiles in a few minutes. It's purely just a set of configs.

It would still require install scripts to get from a fresh Arch install to Omarchy. And then those scripts would also be adding scripts that aren't really necessary for any single person's dotfiles but that’s not really the point.

The difference is there is an implicit contract. Omarchy is maintained as a complete system. You can install it from an ISO, update it like a distribution, and expect someone to care about whether the pieces work together. hyprland is a minimal compositor and you have to figure out how to put together the other pieces of a shell to get a complete experience. If you're doing that piecemeal, you have to maintain and update those on your own. Changes to each piece that break something has to be addressed individually. With Omarchy, that is maintained by someone else and the downstream user just runs an update to omarchy. It compiles a group of disparate packages and makes something cohesive enough to not require jumping into configuration files to use.

That is different from downloading someone’s dotfiles. A dotfiles repo is usually written for one person’s machine and workflow. Omarchy may have started from DHH's dots, but it is structured as something other people are meant to install, update, override, and live in. It separates Omarchy’s defaults from user overrides [1].

I'm not sure what exactly is required for something to be considered a 'distro' but omarchy definitely feels more like one than not, albeit a relatively thin distro based on Arch.

[1] https://learn.omacom.io/2/the-omarchy-manual/65/dotfiles

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#158

Post by mbirth » Mon, May 25, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

andrewjf wrote: post #36

mbirth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was better when it was still a native app and not this Electron nonsense.

Quality in general seems to be going downhill, too. Frequently the desktop app and the safari extension won't be in sync and missing a recently added password, or doesn't show up on my other devices hours later. I still have no idea how the extension vs desktop app actually work together, or if they do at all. Sometimes 1password (safari extension) is "locked" - but the desktop app isn't locked? and No amount of clic…

Wait, it even needs an extension for Safari?

I'm using Strongbox (uses a KeePass-compatible database) which integrates into Apple's AutoFill API and appears automatically in all input fields - just like Keychain. No extension needed.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#159

Post by JCattheATM » Mon, May 25, 2026, 1:02 AM UTC

least wrote: post #157

JCattheATM wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it does kind of have to be a “distro” because the appeal is that you don’t maintain the scripts yourself. It's not a distro because you could overwrite everything by downloading someone else's dotfiles in a few minutes. It's purely just a set of configs.

It would still require install scripts to get from a fresh Arch install to Omarchy. And then those scripts would also be adding scripts that aren't really necessary for any single person's dotfiles but that’s not really the point. The difference is there is an implicit contract. Omarchy is maintained as a complete system. You can install it from an ISO, update it like a distribution, and expect someone to care about…

> It would still require install scripts to get from a fresh Arch install to Omarchy.

If it's really just primarily dotfiles, those 'install scripts' are just going to be a few cp and maybe tar commands.

> Omarchy is maintained as a complete system. You can install it from an ISO, update it like a distribution, and expect someone to care about whether the pieces work together.

Not entirely though, because they defer so much control and judgement to the actual distro they are layering over.

I guess it's semantics. I guess if you consider Kubuntu a different distro from Ubuntu then so too would Omarchy be a distinct Distro.

Re: Omarchy Is Not A Distro

#160

Post by poly2it » Mon, May 25, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

soupbowl wrote: post #122

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…

"It is understandable to be frustrated at a project without technical merit gaining so much traction" Not really, seems kinda weird to be frustrated by an opensource project that people have decided to build a community around. When POPos was just an Ubuntu fork with a few gnome extensions and a better nvidia installer, I guess you were upset it got traction also? Or is their enhanced nvidia bash script enough of tec…

To the extent that sticking to defaults become technical apathy, yes, that can be troublesome for Linux as a whole. If the Linux user base was to grow considerably via Omarchy, there would be a higher support burden for the specific technologies and hacks it'd use. Consider Ubuntu as an analogy. It is popular because it is used widely, not because it is innovative or moves Linux technology forward (compared to e.g. NixOS).

> I wonder how you feel about a sponsored Kubuntu conference

Oddly specific? If you were honestly interested in a technical discussion then yes, in short, I wouldn't consider Kubuntu the pinnacle of the Linux-human interface. A sponsored conference? I have no idea why that is relevant or why you brought it up in such a stingy manner.

Again, what I find interesting in these low-barrier distributions, be it Omarchy or otherwise, is the implicit burden on the rest of the Linux ecosystem. The original author of the article could have expanded on Omarchy in this relation rather than just its technical shortcomings.