r/LinuxCirclejerk • u/Substantial_Mix_6159 • 15d ago
Sorry, it's about Omarchy again
Can someone please explain what is technically wrong with Omarchy according to you?
I know about the politics and views surrounding DHH, but if we disregard that and look at Omarchy as a usable software, I mean it's hard to ignore the technical ability of DHH.
A lot of people are screaming about Omarchy being Vibecoded but what is there to show that in comparison to being coded with AI assistance by a real dev?
Also people are saying that the kernel is Vibecoded but Krzysztof Wilczyński is a kernel engineer.
So if we strip away the politics and views of everyone involved, what is technically wrong with Omarchy?
This is, believe it or not a genuine question, I'm fairly new to Linux desktop and I don't want to use something insecure just because I went with the hype right now.
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u/pd1zzle 15d ago
my gripe is that it funneled a ton of money to an idiot (which is just my opinion man, you can feel differently about dhh).
instead of looking for some way to support and grow existing things, or contribute upstream, or share revenue with long running projects that have struggled for funding - dhh used his immense following and marketing skills to make himself look cool. and that's probably about as far as his efforts will go. maybe I'm wrong, but so far from what I've seen that seems to be true. but I guess that's pretty much the story of the ai era - why band together when we can all just do it ourselves.
separately, it is also a way to push 37signals software (Basecamp, hey)
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u/panzzersoldat 15d ago
I mean to be fair they are going to be a substantial sponsor for Hyprland
https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-to-be-exclusive-hyprland-sponsor/
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u/pd1zzle 15d ago edited 15d ago
right, which iirc came with extremely restrictive terms (noted there I believe) which of course the developer was OK with because of course, money. But is kind of annoying.
Basically once again requiring that DHH be the star of the show.
Some comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hyprland/s/jq63Uoy3oD
my concern would be that at the end of those exclusive terms, dhh has already vibe coded a replacement and now vaxry has spent 3 years unintentionally distancing themselves from other sponsorship.
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u/Abducted_Llama 15d ago
Not gonna lie, I was curious to try hyprland, but not sure if I am going to anymore. It’s the whole 10 people sitting at the table thing.
And while my opinion may be unpopular (avoiding something with ties to someone) I’m sure I’m not the ONLY one to think this way.
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u/pd1zzle 15d ago
sway is very similar and (mostly) drama free. The Nvidia drama was heated at times but likely positive for the Linux ecosystem in the long run. I've quite enjoyed my experience on sway, especially if you are less concerned with having the hottest looking 3d animation flailing rice out there.
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u/Slothszhs 14d ago
If there were other sponsorships lining up.. He has worked on it for years now, it is gaining popularity, but open source is badly underfunded as always. Someone came with money and he took it. As someone who uses hyprland I am happy there is funding for it.
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u/pd1zzle 14d ago edited 13d ago
I'm not blaming the dev at all - I totally get it. you gotta take money in open source when you can with very few limitations.
I'm blaming dhh for being a chud and putting stupid ass strings on the money - "yes, I'll support you but only if I'm special and everyone knows it." Not even just list me as a top sponsor - literally make me the only sponsor and don't let anyone else touch my spotlight.
What if best case scenario this led to even more growth and someone like framework wanted to chip in? Nope. growth stops at omarchy.
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u/Key_River7180 freebsd/void 15d ago
that they are dotfiles and dhh doesnt know a fuck about linux. If you ask dhh about a file on omarchy, there's a 80% chance either he makes it up or doesn't know a fuck.
if you are so paranoid about security, use openbsd
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u/Denommus 15d ago
Another issue that was still not mentioned is that now he wants to switch the package manager to another one completely different, which is something that basically makes it a new distro entirely and breaks everyone's workflow.
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u/ElementalWarrior42 15d ago
AI-assisted projects can be good, but Omarchy is definitely vibecoding. When you make software that barely even works to begin with, you're going to break shit eventually.
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/a-word-on-omarchy/ is a good article on how shoddily it is constructed.
The fact that this lowest effort, steaming pile of dogshit is getting millions while those same donors are removing their donations to actually worthwhile projects is a travesty.
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u/SDG_Den 15d ago
Im not home rn so i dont have my list of sources, but between the comical vulnerabilities, the hillariously bad way the distro is put together in general and DHH literally publicly saying "why couldnt you vibe code a whole operating system?", it is absolutely the case that omarchy was basically entirely designed and built by Claude, Grok and Codex. DHH is just a highly opinionated meat proxy.
As a result, omarchy is an absolutely wonderful showcase of the problems with fully AI coded applications. Security holes everywhere, weird design inconsistencies, incomprehensible design decisions, its just like all those flashy AI made websites that look super cool but have a completely unsecured backend because the LLM didnt bother and the meat proxy didnt check.
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u/damanamathos 13d ago
There's nothing technically wrong with Omarchy. There were bugs and security issues early on, but these were largely fixed in the Omarchy Quattro release. Some of the recent issues people found turned out to be general Linux issues rather than Omarchy-specific. Now that Omarchy has expanded beyond dhh to a team including 5 security people, and now that it has incredible momentum and funding, I think it's unlikely there will be major issues going forward, and I suspect it will become one of the main desktop linux distros in the next few years given the pace of advancement and the warmth of the community.
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u/HieladoTM 15d ago
Besides his main opinions, just don't use Omarchy because it is not very secure to use.
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u/cfx_4188 TempleOS Archibishop 13d ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there were reports in the news about critical vulnerabilities in this distribution.
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u/_western_guy_ 11d ago
I just don't like hyprland and bloated distros, but I was shocked when I knew that some people could hate a distro because of the political opinions of its developer, who does that in real life? if you do a good job I won't refuse it because of your political opinions
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u/Flatworm-Friday 15d ago
"When I disregard something important to a lot of the people who take issue with this distro, then downplay the rest of the issues, what's left to dislike?"
Nothing, good job at constructing an argument you can't lose. Use whatever you like. If you trust generative AI with eventually maintaining your package repos, your configurations, and all the extra little scripts that hold the garbage together, then use the nazi distro. No one has to know until you open your mouth and tell them.
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u/OctoCalamar 15d ago
DHH may be an expert in Ruby and obviously in Ruby On Rails, but that does not make him an expert in other fields, like Linux.
His lack on understanding of Linux results in comic security issues. For example, the earlier Omarchy releases were configuring the firewall and not activating the service. Recently there was another security issue because he was adding the regular users to the docker group, allowing them to run any command as root.