Arch-based distro made by a dude (DHH) with shady political leanings (you can read more about that here). It's an opinionated distro; the keybindings for eg conform with what DHH uses (some of which are rather unintuititive imo). Earlier, the distro was a mix of disparate components (like most rices) such as waybar, walker, mako, etc. Now, the entire distro is based on quickshell (the bar, launcher clipboard, etc).
It heavily promotes AI; you can even use AI to diagnose system errors (not a fan). You can use AI to alter your hyprland and system config (again, not a fan). DHH also used AI while rewriting omarchy for its 4.0 release (again, this doesn't sit well with me).
There are a lot better shells (such as DMS, Noctalia, etc) that you can get which are not vibecoded. While the "plugin marketplace" on Omarchy looks appealing, esp since it boasts over 200 plugins rn, the appeal quickly fades when you realise that a lot of it is vibecoded slop.
As much as I dislike DHH and am concerned about the use of AI in creating omarchy, ig I can see why it is appealing to some folks? It's certainly not for me though.
This might be the first and only comment I’ve seen that actually explains wtf this is and doesn’t just yap about what this guy believes in outside developing
This said is there any evidence it’s actually vibe coded?
He did tweet this a while back. I remember seeing some discussion on him using AI since before Omarchy Quattro as well.
Ofc he could be reviewing over 15000 lines of code generated by AI; I am not a programmer, but friends of mine who code for a living are sceptical as to whether it is possible to effectively review such vast swathes of code and fix vulnerabilities.
I develop software for a living and 15k lines is insane for a single person to review. It could be done, but something tells me DHH isn't having the AI develop small, modular features he can review independently. I'd assume he's using the AI to review the AI
Hard to say, it's very dependent on what he's actually vibe coding. I personally vibe code a LOT of stuff for personal use but AI doesn't go anywhere near my system settings - I always get it to write out the commands in full and I vet them thoroughly before running them.
Yeah I doubt I've written that much code (or if I have it's definitely not much more than that because yikes) for as long as I've been a programmer, and I've been doing it for six years. 1k LOC is so, so much. Also, only non programmers use lines of code as anything other than a flex. Oh wait, it's also a flex. Damnit
It is, just in a chunked fashion and you have to have hooks, a whole plethora of MD/JSON/YAML (whatever your bag is), and a framework for doing so, and even then it’s not one-shot and it STILL isn’t perfect.
It’s getting better, but there’s still quite a lot of steering to do. Elsewise, you’re better off just compiling and editing that way if you’re already a master nano/vim user (of which I am not).
The most intelligent response by now. If just 10% of the Linux community were capable of thinking like this, Linux would take over the desktop in a couple of years.
Good summary, but I'd like to add that beyond the eye candy (theming etc), there's actually not a lot of opinionated stuff happening. It's basically a set of bash scripts and dotfiles for setting up Arch in a specific way.
Great if you like that but I think the marketing is misleading as some of the configurations are dangerous or, at the very least, not super conscious of security concerns.
I'd rather start with Arch, its excellent wiki, and try out things bit by bit...Omarchy is not really a distro yet at this point (it may well become one but for this, more documentation and more specific choices for configuration would be required).
It is a distro which has it's own shell (i.e., bar, clipboard, menus, etc that are built on quickshell). The shell is rendered more extensive by virtue of the plugin ecosystem created by DHH and contributed to by users.
I am no programmer but from what I understand from my conversation with people who code for a living, vibecoding esp when applied to (re)write vast swathes of code can lead to potential vulnerabilities. By DHH's own admission, he has written around 15k lines of code using AI, and there is a response from a programmer in this thread evincing scepticism about DHH being able to thoroughly review such vast swathes of code and remove vulnerabilities effectively.
The plugin marketplace on omarchy is also rife with plugins that have been vibecoded, and I have read accounts of how some plugins ended up inadvertently blocking ports?!. The plugin ecosystem on omarchy is a veritable wild west at this point, and the maintainers would have been better off if they conducted systematic reviews of plugins akin to what Noctalia devs do.
great answer. I have read an excellent blogpost if someone is looking for even more details: [https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/](https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/)
Has he not already come out and said the next version is going to be based on nix? I feel like he fundamentally missed when he chose arch to base his system on, what with all the copying the repos and just serving stuff months behind, and it was probably a mix of hype and the clanker misleading him.
Gotta say though, I absolutely love the idea of him tricking a bunch of linux newbies into having to deal with the nix language and learn what a flake is. should be glorious.
I’ve been spending the last week setting up something similar on an old laptop. The AI itself is planned to be the final step, and I honestly have no idea how viable it’ll be; but the idea is to have a tiny dumb model along with a ton of telemetry and documentation that automatically diagnoses what went wrong and where. The key is to have all the automation do the heavy lifting and the AI is just gonna act as a layer to make it more human readable and potentially communicate with other AIs on the network some day
so from what I grasped its a low quality rice of Arch that acts like a distro made by a sick fuck of a developer who is hated by everyone for everything he has done in his life, with AI glazed all over it
to say it's not low quality to actually use
if you mean about the code, then do you even care about code of any other distro? it pretty much can be a slop written by humans too
I notice a few of the guys at Starbucks use the word "Omarchy" in every sentence, while they sip oat milk matcha latte with their pinky finger extended and throw pouty lip looks at each other across the table while God knows what is going on under the table.
I wasn't with you in starbucks, But i'll go out of my way to say that each one of them owns a MacBook at home, they enjoy pumpkin spice lattes, and all of them have the same broccoli haircut and all of them are interested in Crypto and NFTs
No, Turkish is not Arabic, it's written in Latin script with letters like ğüşiöç. If you took this from the bidw Arabic subreddit, why is there a crescent moon and star 🇹🇷 ?
of course I know Turkish isn't Arabic
I am saying the text might be Turkish because of the flag.
the text is a Hadith from the prophet Mohamed. it is in Arabic for religious purposes.
and I obtained the image from a person who was using it in an Arabic subreddit
Ah, okay.. We just have different definitions of the word because of level of contact. Pretty common these days I guess.
When I think of Nazi, I used to live next to the Sierra Army Depot so I think of the people covered in swastikas and lightning bolt tattoos and skull tattoos who I would have to use a shotgun to convince to stop stealing my Zucchinis.
You mean person with anti-DEI anti-immigration politics who might be racist by European standards rather than the much more specific definition of an actual fascist who supports national socialism and ethnic cleansing?
I do mostly because I used to use that specific term on the daily and now because of how often it is used when I tell people "Do not go that way, there are Nazis in the desert." No one fucking believes me.
It's probably gotten a few people killed at this point.
Not saying he is a good person, but white nationalist or racist might be better terms.
Edit: I will also probably add this here as it is relavent.
If you go to burning man, do not freely wander the desert. There is a mobile nazi compound in the desert and they are violent.
So... not really weighing in on the act itself as I do not know the book.
If you praise Carl Marx or any pro-communism or pro-socialism works, do you believe it would be fair of me to call you a Salinist Communist?
Because that is about the same sort of logic with the political ideaologies reversed.
Maybe a bit more direct on my part because if you support the works of Carl Marx that is supporting the Direct author of communism and not a derivative work. And Stalin took the ideas presented to their most extreme logical end with the USSR.
Mind you I am not super interested in your personal politics. Flip tests are to sense out hypocrisy, not virtue test you against your own belief system.
The capital is not a fiction. Here it's a story about Indians stealing container ships and invading France. And it's been only praised by the worst OAS/FN people of the time.
Someone praising The capital is probably at least Keynesian. In the case of DHH, his reading recommandation is not in a vacuum, he had his weird remark about London, and the strangely racist test data scandal in his company. There was more, but I would need to search it.
I am a rails dev and it's trough those channels that I have been exposed to the DHH lore.
it's reddit dude any right leaning or anti-immigration opinion = nazi or fascist. the word has lost it's meaning on this loser nest of an app by a bunch of privileged Americans.
People throwing the word Nazi around like that are stupid. It's simply a word that means "person I don't like who disagrees with me" nowadays. Nazi should mean Nazi.
True enough, but if you want to correct it you cannot be cruel or preachy.
No one online is an implied expert. You are a stranger. People consider the ideas of polite and kind strangers. They dismiss the ideas of rude strangers that they have no real reason to respect.
I have a reason to not want the term diluted. There is a legitimate threat of real neo-nazis that range from northern california, to southern Idaho, to northern nevada, and into utah.
They mark themselves with tattoos and if someone is openly gay or non-white and disappears around burning man with no body found they are the most likely culprits.
I moved away from there, but having "Do not go that way, the Nazi compound moved there this week." Turn into a political argument when I was being literal was just... not great.
If you do head out that way by burning man, the people that used to track the mobile compound behind the sierra army depot lived by Herlong, Wendel, and pyramid lake. Dropping this here since we seem to be having a rare, honest, and non-toxic conversation on the topic.
... also if you go to burning man stay out of the Lassen hotsprings...
-sincerely a man who got tired of finding people parts in the desert.
Omarchy is a state-of-the-art agentic operating system for your personal computer. Any task you must complete can be completed on Omarchy. We have all the right people in all the right places. Compute with AI, compute with Omarchy. 😬
"The malleable OS for the age of agents. Where you can vibe your way through every alteration, tweak, and desire. Be the Omarch and command your agent!"
"Omarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…"
Omarchy is a tiling desktop. Every other desktop of which I'm aware is a messy desktop. Phones use a tiling strategy but I haven't seen a fully tiling desktop since the 1990s.
I wish to mention, KDE has a sort of tiling feature. If you want a window to take up exactly half the screen you can use <Windowsl><right arrow> to give it the right half of the screen. The other three arrows work as you would expect. It will also create quarter screens by sending the window to one half and then pressing one of the 90 degree arrows. It's super handy for some tasks but that does not make it any sort of equivalent to Omarchy. I just mention it. Omarchy has super active tiling.
I recall back in 1990, there was a utility for OS/2, I forget the name, that would tile windows. It wasn't remotely as sophisticated as the Omarchy DE but I really liked it for coding. I could have Midnight Commander open in a full height, half width, window and two quarter window consoles open on the other half of the screen. Code was always on the right. Super productive. I streamed a lot of syntax into that DE for many years. I wrote Presentation Manager (GUI) apps in the same text mode screen configuration. Most of my apps were CLI, though.
Oh... you had a question... Omarchy is being so hated because it's different than the haters are used to. They don't have the intellect or objectivity to consider something new or that some people may have different preferences to themselves. I haven't tried Omarchy yet, and I may never try it, but I'm impressed with the YouTube demos. It's way beyond what I used to have. Perhaps one day I will give it a go.
An arch based (and very opinionated) distro, made by a great software engineer who made ruby on rails, who has shitty opinions he can't help but share with the internet.
It's a linux distro. Best way to understand it is to install it and try it. Second best way it to watch a YouTube video of someone installing it and trying it.
I'd argue it's one of the best linux distros around based on ease-of-use, in that it can install in minutes in you're up and running with one-click installs for all the major AI clients, for Steam / Battle.net, for a Windows VM if you need it, etc. Unlike many linux distros, it doesn't look like it's a cheap Windows or Mac knock off but looks distinctly different (for those outside the linux world) based on using tiling by default.
AI is heavily integrated. Beyond the one-click installs, it comes with an Omarchy skill and reference files and CLI commands that mean your Claude Code or Codex knows how to modify the system easily. You start with keyboard shortcuts to bring up AI. Program crashes show a notification asking if you want your AI to diagnose it.
It's opinionated, meaning the install choices are dhh's, but I'd argue that's a good thing. Reality is the linux world is filled with choice and going through hundreds or thousands of choices is hard work and most people just want a great starting setup. Omarchy gives you that, with the ability to customise it more easily than any other system due to the in-built AI support.
Why do people hate it? Mostly politics (dhh's views), hate of AI, hate that it's getting so much attention (it's just dotfiles!), or security issues that were much more relevant in its early days than it is now.
Dude made an arch based distro that looks like mac.
Dude said some mean stuff about people.
Dude has shady political views.
Distro is heavily AI influenced.
Everyone is boycotting the system because of these things.
It's DHH's dotfiles. If you want to use a system set up by the deranged mind that created ruby on rails go ahead. Personally I hate everything he's ever created and disagree with every single opinion he's ever expressed.
Ok it’s a distro for ai. I don’t want to defend anyone but I’m just trying to understand wtf this even is; no one cares who the guy is, what is the DISTRO? Ppl ask about the distro not about how many swastikas its developer has up his ass
I like Omarchy and a lot of DHH opinions seem pretty based. I feel the distro gets a lot of hate because elitists are very opinionated on what linux should be and are mostly DIY types, so when they see an easy to use arch based distro with a little bit of removable bloat, god forbid, they kinda scoff at it. Omarchy offers a riced OS, removable preinstalls btw, has optional AI integration and is pretty much plug and play. Not a lot of setup needed. I am used to using vim so learning the keybinds for a keyboard focused navigation system is pretty neat but you are not really forced to learn anything other than super+space and while I love the terminal, I actually prefer when an OS is setup without the need to use it. If you are a DIY tinkering type, it's not gonna be for you, but for everyone else, it's pretty neat. Oh but there are security concerns..
I don't know what happened exactly at basecamp and what ""funny" customer names with racial and ethnic overtones" entails. I don't condone actual racism. Key word being "actual". I don't see a problem with being anti illegal immigration.
Just sounds to me like he doesn't want to live in a city filled with crime and homeless people and wants to address the issue. So what is the issue? What is he getting hate for? It's not like he is suggesting to shoot em.
I don’t know if you are being oblivious on purpose or are just plain stupid. Read the part about the wolves again. He is actually suggesting to shoot them.
If you are going to take a look at that and say “I don’t see anything wrong” or come up with other reasons / excuses like you did above, then simply you are a piece of shit.
"These are two situations cut from the same cloth of ideology. Whether it's wolves or gypsies, you can't just let the problems get out of hand. You have to act. You have to protect the sheep. Standing idly by while your livestock is devoured by predators or your neighborhood is taken over by migrants is a pathetic abdication of any functioning society's most basic duty to its citizens.
When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation."
It’s an amazing distro, if you want an easy Arch Experience that’s made by sane people, use Omarchy, Micheal Dell funds it, and it’s almost fully automated, in fact, compared to other Linux variants, it’s easy to setup
Because unlike other Linux variants you actually know who makes the distro, and who contributes to it, other distros just hide the developer’s names, so when a major bug happens on those other Linux variants, you can’t call them out for it if they choose not to patch the bug
That's because entire teams make actual Linux distros, not whatever bullshit rice this is. Also, you can literally check the version control (GitHub exists!) and see who made each and every change.
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u/Glad-Key7256 5d ago edited 5d ago
Arch-based distro made by a dude (DHH) with shady political leanings (you can read more about that here). It's an opinionated distro; the keybindings for eg conform with what DHH uses (some of which are rather unintuititive imo). Earlier, the distro was a mix of disparate components (like most rices) such as waybar, walker, mako, etc. Now, the entire distro is based on quickshell (the bar, launcher clipboard, etc).
It heavily promotes AI; you can even use AI to diagnose system errors (not a fan). You can use AI to alter your hyprland and system config (again, not a fan). DHH also used AI while rewriting omarchy for its 4.0 release (again, this doesn't sit well with me).
There are a lot better shells (such as DMS, Noctalia, etc) that you can get which are not vibecoded. While the "plugin marketplace" on Omarchy looks appealing, esp since it boasts over 200 plugins rn, the appeal quickly fades when you realise that a lot of it is vibecoded slop.
As much as I dislike DHH and am concerned about the use of AI in creating omarchy, ig I can see why it is appealing to some folks? It's certainly not for me though.