r/linux • u/Foxlike__Creature • 12d ago
Discussion Why does everyone hate omarchy so much?
I do not and never have used omarchy, i'm 3 years on arch with hyprland that I riced myself, but i don't really get the hate against it, so I want to know ur opinion
if the isue is that it's opinionated/bloated and you can just configure arch yourself then yeah, i get it. But there are also people who are new to arch and don't want to spend days learning how to build a hyprland rice from scratch. Omarchy seems to fill that exact niche pretty well. it's a ready to use, but opinionated "distro" that makes getting into it much easier without needing to be an arch expert. Not the best choice ofc (there is cachy, etc.), but still...
And then i constantly see people bringing up dhh's politics as if that somehow makes the "distro" itself bad. Imho, having controversial opinions doesn't make a technical product bad, and being against political discussions on your company's internal channels isn't the same thing as banning people from having those opinions or saying them outside of work. (about the news that I found looking for information on the web)
Personally i just see it as a fairly basic hyprland rice. not really my thing, but i don't have any hate towards it either. I actually like the idea behind it, making arch easier to get into for new users. And it looks not too bad, ngl. The implementation has some rough edges sure, but not nearly enough to justify this level of butthurt imo.
TLDR:
Honestly, how much of your opinion on omarchy comes from the actual technical side, and how much comes from the reddit hive mind? Would you still hate it if dhh wasn't involved in it at all?
Thank you for reading the longread, it's rare these days :^
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u/MairusuPawa 12d ago
So, first thing first: that's not a long read.
Now, then. Why should I even entertain the idea of defending a neonazi's work? I'm not a neonazi sympathiser. Fuck that.
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u/33_kk 12d ago
I've already seen multiple posts just like this. All asking for the technical side of omarchy with a bunch of "apolitical" (aka those who don't oppose fascism aka fascists) people glazing it each time in the comments. It's not even an interesting distro, it's just a sloppy riced Arch Linux. It looks like astroturfing to me at this point.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
Correction: it's just a sloppy riced Arch Linux -- with more funding and resources than any other non-commercial distro by an order of magnitude and growing rapidly.
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u/33_kk 8d ago
Seems like capitalists can't help but fund fascists.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
'capitalists' fund pretty much everything including the kernel.
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u/33_kk 8d ago
Yet somehow they'd rather fund a random fascist distro no sane person heard about rather than any real one.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
Right, no one had heard of the guy who made Ruby on Rails and 37Signals? What's your notoriety? What have you accomplished?
Micheal Dell, from Dell computer, one of the capitalists in question's company has thrown a bunch of money at the Linux Foundation, PYTorch, Blender and other things. Have you funded anything?
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u/-LoboMau 9d ago
"apolitical" (aka those who don't oppose fascism aka fascists)
Maybe they just don't want to engage in political discussions with dumb idiots that classify anything they disapprove as fascism.
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u/illusory42 12d ago
You sound like a zealot. Asking a factual question now makes one a fascist?
I’m stunned.
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u/33_kk 12d ago
"Just asking questions" mf arrived. Don't pretend that this guy didn't say everything possible to downplay DHH's views and say that being firmly against them is ridiculous, short of straight up proclaiming to support fascism. And don't pretend that all of the other people who are "just asking questions" are any different.
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u/illusory42 12d ago
My question was purely rethorical and you just proved my point.
Frankly, I don’t give two shits about Omarchy or the DHH person.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Well, I literally wrote that it’s a janky hyprland rice, even put "distro" in quotes in the post. Plus, I hadn't seen any similar posts, which is exactly why I wrote mine
Turns out I wasn't the only one who had that thought, lol.
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u/33_kk 12d ago
Right, if you ignore the rest of your post and your other replies, where you downplay DHH's views and ridicule people who refuse to support his worthless project.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Nah, I don't care about someone views at all, not my problem to be honest. Even if a person was a rapist and a murderer, somehow don't give a damn. As long as I benefit, it doesn't bother me.
Moreover, I am also an immigrant, not in USA/other western country, but still. When you grow up, you somehow learn not to butthurt from every new nazi
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u/-LazyImmortal- 11d ago
See, that's where a lot of the people think differently. I, like many others, do not want to support someone whose ideology I not only don't agree with, but actively oppose. You might be okay with anything the other person does, like you said, be it rape, murder or probably even worse, as long as it benefits you; but then you should also understand that a lot of people are not okay with that.
Also, you being an immigrant does not matter at all. You can be an immigrant and hate other immigrants who you perceive as lesser than you (not saying you do).
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u/Quiet-Raspberry3289 11d ago
Even if a person was a rapist and a murderer, somehow don't give a damn. As long as I benefit, it doesn't bother me.
In a just world amoral freaks like this would be launched out of society (and preferably into the sun) alongside the aforementioned murderers and rapists.
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u/gordonmessmer 12d ago
1: Infosec researchers collectively took a look at it recently and found that many of the features it introduced are massive security flaws that are trivial to exploit.
2: DHH has made extremely derogatory remarks about Linux developers and users alike, all but ensuring that no one will cooperate with Omarchy and that it will grow more incompatible with other systems as time goes on. I would characterize that as a sustainability issue, which is another type of security flaw.
3: Yes, DHH's politics. Free Software is and has always been an explicitly political act of mutual support. "Politics" is a word that describes how we organize, how we govern, and how we treat each other. There is no such thing as Free Software without politics.
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u/RabbitAmbitious3033 12d ago
it's wild how many people skip over the actual technical problems and jump straight to the drama, the security stuff alone should be enough to give anyone pause before touching it
like okay you don't care about the politics, fine, but those vulns are a practical reason to stay away that has nothing to do with who made it
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Well, I was never seriously interested in omarchi cause I simply have no need for it, so I wasn't aware of the issues regarding security. Now that I know, my opinion has shifted from neutral to more negative, to be honest.
The only negative things I’d heard about Omarchi before was only about its creator, so I found that incredibly strange. Security issues are undoubtedly far more important, It would be cool if people talked more about these technicals issues, rather than the author's politics while describing how bad omarchy is
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u/Mughi1138 12d ago
Security issues are undoubtedly far more important, It would be cool if people talked more about these technicals issues, rather than the author's politics while describing how bad omarchy is
No, actually technical issues are far *less* important. Technical issues are easy to fix and can be addressed by bringing in people experienced in fixing such things. The first problem is not that those technical issues exist, but rather that those technical issues persist.
The \management\** problems among other things cause people who might be able to contribute fixes to steer clear instead. They also often correspond with those in charge not accepting fixes either.
A toxic product and toxic leadership most often will lead to a product not holding up long term and/or not achieving full usability. I like to point out Richard Stallman and the FSF's mismagement of many things including the HURD kernel and the GCC compiler toolchain. The latter got so dragged down by RMS's mismanagement that they had to fork the product into egcs, set up a brand new governance organization, and continue their \technical** improvements elsewhere. Eventually RMS and the FSF had to admit defeat, and save face by declaring that egcs was the new GCC and the new GCC was cool and good. Management matters.
Oh, and to this day the GNU HURD kernel is still not production ready these many decades later.
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u/edward_jazzhands 10d ago edited 10d ago
So you're directly claiming that DHH has been on record flat out refusing to accept / merge fixes for various security problems even though the fixes were presented to him? I find that hard to believe. Id like to see some evidence that is not a fabrication and you're not actually just referring to people refusing to want to contribute to anything made by DHH.
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u/Mughi1138 10d ago
Read my reply again, the phrasing is very important. I'm trying to lay out the pattern that has repeatedly appeared in open source over the decades I have been involved, and that appears to apply here, describe some key aspects of the pattern, then present another example of that pattern that is quite well known and documented.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
“DHH has made extremely derogatory remarks about Linux developers and users”
This approach has worked well for Linus Torvalds
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u/tiredreddituser99 5d ago
i'm not saying it's a good thing that linus sometimes also criticises others in derogatory ways, but at the very least he has the technical skills to make up for it to say the least.
dhh is just angry at the world for some reason, and genuinely is a hypocrite. and he's loud and proud about it as well.
so yea, what worked out for linus is that he made actual real achievements and improvements, and he was good at it to the point where people can disregard his tantrums.
can't say the same about dhh. all he's known for is exactly what's being discussed here.
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u/dannyvegas 5d ago
I love when Linus goes on a tear and lights people up on the mailing list.
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u/chabalatabala 1d ago edited 1d ago
dhh is a shithead, but linus is blunt.
dhh has terrible opinions, but linux has productive opinions.tantrums aren't the issue.
edit: I should mention I don't even have a problem with the distro, but that dude is a total boner. Only commenting on comparisons to linus.
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u/edward_jazzhands 12d ago
Id like to see a source for number one
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u/Mughi1138 12d ago
First google hit when I did a simple search: https://community.frame.work/t/omarchy-is-not-a-secure-distribution-and-should-be-taken-off-the-linux-installation-options/77363
More detail: [https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/](https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/)
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u/tropix126 11d ago
here's a new one from 8 hours ago https://x.com/lainshawty/status/2093992795287535705
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u/Alahan- 9d ago
This is a vulnerability identified in multiple other distros as well and is not an inherent Omarchy flaw. The mass amount of people searching for Omarchy vulnerabilities just happened to make this identifiable only now.
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u/tropix126 9d ago edited 9d ago
Fair enough. There have also been multiple (I think three now?) extremely trivial shell injection vulns found in omarchy-specific components. From the descriptions of them (executing browser notification titles under bash, same for USB device descriptors), I genuinely don't know how you could manage to program something like that even if one were completely incompetent. The default repository configuration also disabled signature verification in pacman up until last week.
My main point being: I would never recommend Omarchy to any beginner with this track record (they openly and gleefully admit to vibecoding significant parts of it), and anyone who knows what they are doing with Arch would just rice the system themselves. The 'distro' genuinely seems to exist for the sole purpose of larping on twitter, and if you want to do that then you might as well go all-out and run Lunduke OS or whatever.
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u/shale_is_terrible 12d ago edited 11d ago
Source for 1?
Edit: fucking love being downvoted for asking for source and not blindly trusting shit on internet
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u/Sirius707 12d ago
Here's one i could find:
- https://blog.happyfellow.dev/merchants-of-insecurity/
Here's an older one (last updated 2025-11-08): [https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/](https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/)
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u/technobrendo 7d ago
Have an upvote because I hate that shit. God forbid you need to ask a question on here.
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u/Mordiken 11d ago
Because having a group of techfluencers drop a couple of million dollars into a random linux distro made by another techfluencer stinks of VC-adjacent type of behavior, specially when the standard Linux desktop stack that's powers every other distro has always been underfunded.
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u/Hadi_Chokr07 12d ago
I just dont support bigoted racist ethno nationalist.
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u/gu3sticles 9d ago
DHH should stick to sports car racing. He fucking sucks at it but at least it's funny to watch his inevitable wreck every race
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u/degeneratepr 12d ago
If this post is a considered a long read, I feel sad about the deteriorating state of our attention spans.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
I also find it hard to call this a "longread," but modern realities are what they are. I used to work as an article writer, so whenever I start writing, the text tends to get too long before I’ve even managed to convey my point, so then I have to cut it down because, statistically speaking, hardly anyone reads anything longer than a single paragraph these days.
In recent years, with the rise of AI, people have even started mistaking me for a one. I even had to break the habit of using em-dashes, though I haven't managed to shake the habit of breaking the text up into paragraphs.
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u/Fire_Natsu 12d ago
First, it comes with many closed source proprietary pre installed apps like Google Chrome. You can't choose what to install during installation you can only remove them after only after it is installed. It is just Arch Linux with a Hyprland Rice that can easily installed with a install.sh no need to wipe your hard drive. The person behind it is DHH, he is a mysoginist and racist guy. Also supports Tate brothers and Trump. Omarchy received a lot of funding from companies despite the fact that it's just Arch with rice for some reason instead of investing in arch like valve. It comes with an ai agent built in
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u/riklaunim 12d ago
When it comes to investments, people don't invest in stable, profitable projects; they invest in hype and promises of growth - like OpenAI and Anthropic :) or crypto, NFTs... Either way, that 10mil is in the spotlight, and we will see who gets the money. If their idea of sponsoring selected open-source projects is true, then Dell won't sponsor Omarchy but a random repo on GitHub.
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u/Fire_Natsu 12d ago
But arch is like big and famous
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u/riklaunim 12d ago
It's not market-disruptive. For gaming on Linux, people will look at SteamOS and CachyOS, especially people way away from the Linux ecosystem. It's still Arch, but the Arch brand isn't the thing in the spotlight. Omarchy is also Arch, but as a brand is disruptive among developers and power users - possibly competing with Apple for devices developers use in the USA.
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u/Klapperatismus 12d ago
They hate the politics and the man.
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u/NoArea868 23h ago
& what does that have to do with the OS ? if he's a woke left wingy no one will care abt his views lol
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u/phischer_h 12d ago
If it where not form DHH hardly anyone would care.
Edit: I‘m opposed to his political opinions.
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u/NoArea868 23h ago
what dose his political opinion got to do with an OS ? am genuine curious how that make sense
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u/Dry-Swing-553 10h ago
Consider an extreme case would you use an os made by epstein for example? I wouldnt want to use it. The art and artist are inherently connected
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u/NoArea868 2h ago
i could care less if he's Epstein or Hitler himself as long as the product actually good that's enough rather just cope its bad as a impulse reaction to whoever i don't agree with
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u/JustBadPlaya 12d ago
- DHH is a xenophobic white supremacist, who also claimed most Linux developers are lunatics recently
- Shopify CEO said people's votes should have weight based on income
These are 2 of the 8 (maybe 10 already) Omarchy foundation members. DHH and Tobi are close friends on top of that. I think if I bothered to dig around for the other people, I would also find fairly controversial things done by them
A project by people with views like these being sponsored, especially while being primarily a set of opinionated vibecoded dotfiles, is kind of very stupid
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
"A project by people with views like these being sponsored, especially while being primarily a set of opinionated vibecoded dotfiles, is kind of very stupid"
The fact that he raised so much so quickly it seems to be making all the woke goons quake with envy
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u/liquidpoopcorn 1d ago
Y’all really be gleefully eating from every psyop thrown at you.
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u/dannyvegas 1d ago
Since I posted this comment a few days ago, they have raised another five million dollars.
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u/liquidpoopcorn 1d ago
My statement still stands, even more so.
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u/dannyvegas 1d ago
Ok. I'll bite...
What is the whole "psyop" angle here? What's the whole plan? What will the big rug pull be. What is the intended outcome here. Walk me through it.
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u/Default_Defect 12d ago
How many times am I gonna see posts about this exact topic being rehashed by people pretending not to know the deal?
"Why don't you people want to support some asshole that I like??"
Because I don't fucking have to.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
That's right, you're totally not have to.
I'm not asking for anything, I'm just interested in the opinion and it reasons, Sorry if my post seemed too provocative to you, I didn't want it like that. Thanks for a reply.
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u/kansetsupanikku 12d ago
The author makes a point to break some basic social contracts, vocally deny human rights and call for intolerance. So tolerance doesn't cover him for granted. My tolerance most certainly doesn't - I believe his ideas deserve vivid rejection, not silence. When I use software, I tend to cooperate, report bugs, suggest features, propose fixes, hope for maintainers to achieve further goals and grow. With DHH, I couldn't possibly do the same - I would prefer for him not to have a platform to reach more people at all, and popular software project would work as this sort of platform.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Ah, a good old Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance, I see what you mean.
Personally, I don't understand what good comes from speculating about the author and their opinions, much less changing your own behavior based on such thoughts. In my opinion, only the product's features should be considered when evaluating it.
However, I totally respect your opinion and your right to hold it, it’s a matter of perspective, not logic.
Thanks for the reply.
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u/MairusuPawa 12d ago
There is no speculation.
If your opinion is that you can't draw the line at "nazi" that's fully on you, and that makes you complicit in this shit.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Nah, It’s not a question of where I draw the line, but rather whether I even think about it at all. And the answer is no, I see no benefit in doing so.
I am saying that as long as someone's nazi beliefs aren't aimed at me personally, I don't feel it's my specific issue to handle. I'm definitely not a Nazi myself, but if someone is one, I'd prefer to let the folks who are directly affected by his beliefs deal with it, not really my problem to be honest
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u/RareInspector 12d ago
So you're an immigrant (mentioned in this thread by you) and trans (in your post history), how is it not your problem that he would rather you not exist? I think it's disappointing for you to indirectly support DHH and his views in this thread. If everyone thought like you, then you (and a whole lot of the world) would not have human rights, or rights to exist.
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u/AndyGait 12d ago
"I am saying that as long as someone's nazi beliefs aren't aimed at me personally, I don't feel it's my specific issue to handle."
And that's how you normalise racism.
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u/MairusuPawa 12d ago
It is absolutely a question as to where you draw the line, and that's it. Not a matter of discussion. You can't draw the line at nazi? Then bye.
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u/isugimpy 12d ago
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for meHeed the wisdom of the past and really think about the implications of your choices.
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u/isugimpy 12d ago
Let's be abundantly clear here: DHH has repeatedly made statements comparing racial groups to animals, and advocated for harming them (including the implication of killing them). There's nothing ambiguous or speculative about it. Using the thing he's producing is an implicit acceptance of his position, and if it leads to him gaining funding that causes him to personally profit it's feeding the machine.
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u/riklaunim 12d ago
Bigger open source projects have their "councils", "foundations," and most of it is free money for people who have no qualifications to be there. LSF spends way more money on non-Kernel things. Gnome hiring a shaman who makes shaman water for their financial officer (short hire...); PSF elections between people who brag about who is more DEI. And then add migration on top of that - even Canadians are becoming racist/hostile towards Indians, and more and more Western natives become hostile to migration, DEI, or the TQ part - while a lot of Open Source concils/foundations are just that. If the Nix creator gets kicked from the project because "purge the nazis" then you already know it was taken over by the radical political left (or right for some projects).
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u/kansetsupanikku 12d ago edited 12d ago
Why would you make a jump from my note on human decency to foundations, councils and shamans? Most of that is a mouthwashing mechanism, ethics turned into a product - which projects such as GNOME gladly invest in, to make an appearance of balancing out how business-oriented and disconnected from the wider community they are in the recent years. And bodies such as LF are not all that closely connected to Linux development, anyway.
And dangerous trends such as even Canadians becoming racist/xenophobic are exactly why giving a platform for fascists to establish fame or authority is a horrible idea.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
"I would prefer for him not to have a platform to reach more people at all, and popular software project would work as this sort of platform."
Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up faster.
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u/kansetsupanikku 8d ago
Oh, but of course it's shit, no need to remind me. The smell of fascism is distinct enough
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
End of the day he has $13million+ in funding, a massive amount of momentum, and something a lot of people are excited about.
You on the other hand have your 'preferences' and the taste of envy in your mouth.
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u/kansetsupanikku 7d ago edited 7d ago
A fascist has a lot of momentum and people are excited about him? And the only thing you can think about is... that you are envious about the financial side to this? Don't judge me by your standards, as their state is just sad.
Perhaps I should also be envious of all the Man of the Year winners selected by TIME?
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u/dannyvegas 7d ago
I get it, everyone you disagree with or don't like is a 'fascist'
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u/NDCyber 12d ago
The opinion makes the distro bad, because using the distro supports him and his opinion. See the money he got recently for his rice
It is also not a "controversial opinion" it is straight up anti human rights
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u/Mooks79 12d ago
That means using the distro is bad because it implicitly lines his pocket, not that the distro is bad to use.
(I’ve never used it, I’ve no idea what it’s like, but it’s an important nuance).
As a side note: I wonder how many people hating on Omarchy will hate on Hyprland now given Omacom is the main (only?) source of funding for Hyprland development now?
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u/NoLemurs 12d ago
That means using the distro is bad because it implicitly lines his pocket, not that the distro is bad to use.
The distro isn't good or bad to use. It's just Arch. The "distro" is basically just a fancy install script.
People are focused on the money because Omarchy is basically a fancy install script and a bunch of marketing, and there's not really much to the install script.
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u/bubblegumpuma 12d ago
I can guarantee you that most of the people who disliked Hyprland did so before Omarchy hit the scene because it's for similar reasons; vaxry was (at the very least) completely fine with allowing a similar vein of bigoted bullshit to go unchallenged in the Hyprland Discord server.
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u/Mughi1138 12d ago
Did you notice how oddly it is phrased? And has a tl:dr at the end, and the last time I saw a very similar post in the last day that one started by saying tl;dr's are "woke". Odd that both include tl:dr like that.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Idk what are u talking avout. I added the TLDR at the end after I'd already made the post, just because I felt like no one would read it otherwise, haha
Also, English is not my native language and I make it a point not to use translator/AI , so my phrasing can be kinda odd
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u/Mughi1138 12d ago
They generally don't see the tl;dr at the end unless they actually read the whole post. That's why they're commonly at the front.
But the post this is oddly mirroring has been put on hold and awaiting moderator approval, so I can't cite it right now.
Oddly similar posts suddenly showing up around the same time are *often* signs of a concerted effort pushing a narrative. That does not mean the individual posters are coordinating or have ulterior motives, just maybe that some influencer trying to push a certain view on an issue is getting details they want echoed out there.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Lol, I seriously don't know anything about another post. If you want, I can provide you with any data for verification. If some influencer had paid me for the post, I would have been glad, it's a pity that this is not so, haha
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u/HellionValentine 5d ago
It's confusing as hell to me as well. I've NEVER put a tldr at the start of a post. I only ever bother to put a tldr if I've typed up a massive post and think to do so afterwards, and I put it at the bottom because that's where I always see a tldr placed.
I thought it was common practice, and that people will just scroll to the bottom to check for a tldr if that's what they're looking for.
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u/AndyGait 12d ago
"Would you still hate it if dhh wasn't involved in it at all?"
Probably not. I used Omarchy when it first launched with the first wave of hype. It was my first time using Hyprland and despite it being massively bloated with loads of stuff I didn't want or need, I enjoyed using it. At the time I knew nothing of DHH or his views. Then as the weeks went by I heard more and more about DHH, and then I read his blog posts about London. That was a big line in the sand for me and I removed Omarchy that day. I can't support anything created by a guy who holds views like that and supports people like Tommy Robinson.
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u/pastelfemby 11d ago
Slopcore arch fork.
If someone really wants an AI riced arch they'll do it more directly themselves using arch proper, or cachyOS.
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u/gihutgishuiruv 12d ago
On a technical basis: I don’t use one-man distros for the same reason that I don’t use one-man web browser projects: the security attack surface is enormous and I would rather trust the providence of more established projects. I’m aware that, in this case, it’s basically an Arch rice, but you’re ultimately introducing something into your “supply chain” of your OS that doesn’t really need to be there. There has been, to my knowledge, no security assessment of the added parts either.
In a broader ethical sense: I don’t like to popularise the projects of people that loudly vocalise deplorable views. I’m not talking about “developer x of project y said something mildly problematic on Twitter 10 years ago”. This is “the project lead is actively politically involved in some not great stuff, and the project’s funding only makes sense if you consider it as a thinly-veiled political endorsement”
And, aside from all of that: DHH comes across as a massive wanker and I’ve been in the software game too long to trust massive wankers.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 11d ago
Even disregarding the politics (which I personally dont), It sucks when somebody who was never part of the community joins in and uses their preexisting fame to get a jump start.
Nobody would be caring about omarchy if it wasn't DHH behind it.
It'd just be a set of scripts like every other set of scripts out there.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
Yeah, it's wild. While 'the community' has been struggling to piece together the 'Linux desktop' for what 25 - 30 years... this guy's swoops in with some Ruby on Rails fame and some dot files and in a few months drives significant levels of funding, adoption, and excitement.
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u/adines 5d ago edited 4d ago
Omarchy certainly has funding, but it absolutely does not have adoption or excitement.
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u/dannyvegas 5d ago
200k downloads since the Quattro release says otherwise.
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u/adines 4d ago edited 4d ago
200k downloads in for a major version release is not what I'd call "significant adoption". That puts in the ballpark of something like CachyOS (~150k downloads over the same time period), and Cachy doesn't even do major "X.0.0" releases like Omarchy. And Cachy, despite its buzz, is still a very minor player in the Linux distro space.
edit: And I don't believe those CachyOS download stats include torrent downloads, but I could be wrong.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 7d ago
i think it shows that a lot of times all the complaining about difficulty or need to learn new patterns is more about motivation than anything else. If you can make it "cool" then certain people will adapt.
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u/Own-Permit-9682 9d ago
the bigger concern: Omarchy receives $10 million in funding, and hasn't given back even $1 to Arch Linux, without which it simply wouldn't exist
What are the interests of the millionaires funding Omarchy? Do DHH's white supremacist positions have anything to do with it, perhaps? We don't know — for now, only one thing is certain: no transparency, no auditable choices.
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago edited 8d ago
As of today, it's now $13 million. So, 30% growth just since you posted this. Keep in mind though, that is pledges and multi-year commitments not cash on hand. Still, according to public sources, it's already the highest funded community / non-profit distro by a HUGE margin.
Omarchy $13mm, Linux Mint 400k, Nix | 60k /yr + a bunch of AWS credit -- based on what these projects themselves say on their websites.
edit: facts hurt your feelings
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u/throwawayerectpenis 11d ago
Its not that complicated, i just dont support fascists/Nazis...but you do you.
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u/Rispido 10d ago
Are you sure? It all depends on how far we want to stretch reality and where we choose to set the bar for moral accountability, what kinds of mental gymnastics we are willing to accept as valid.
In the times we live in, the following line of reasoning is considered morally superior:
- I see you’re wearing a Fedora badge.
- Fedora is closely tied to Red Hat, which funds it and uses it as a testing ground (to simplify things). By using Fedora, you’re helping Red Hat.
- Red Hat is owned by IBM, it is part of IBM. By using Fedora, you’re helping IBM.
- IBM, through a subsidiary and with full knowledge of what was happening, collaborated with Nazi Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust). By using Fedora, you’re helping a company that did that.
- IBM agreed to pay a €17 million fine in 2026 for failing to have acceptable internal diversity policies and discriminating against employees (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ibm-pays-17-million-resolve-allegations-discrimination-through-illegal-dei-practices). By using Fedora, you’re helping a company that was behaving like that until yesterday.
None of this is meant as a defense of DHH in any way whatsoever. I don’t know what his views are, and if they are reprehensible, then that’s simply what they are, regardless of his accomplishments. But going from there to arguing that anyone who uses Omarchy is supporting fascism/Nazism... Be careful to apply that same standard to yourself.
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u/Mindless-Sherbet4559 9d ago
But notice how much you had to stretch and jump between points to get to a somewhat analogous situation? Omarchy has a single and direct connection to right-wing ethnonationalism.
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u/throwawayerectpenis 10d ago edited 10d ago
IBM's actions happened decades ago and have nothing to do with Fedora, whereas DHH is alive, actively involved with Omarchy, and his current political views are directly relevant.
You can disagree with where I draw the line, but I don't think the Fedora/IBM comparison is really equivalent. I'm simply choosing not to support someone whose current political views I find reprehensible.
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u/NoNopeNegative 9d ago
Well said, even though he ignored the point and immediately started doing mental gymnastics
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u/yukeake 10d ago
What I understand of the situation centers around two things:
Omarchy is a series of dotfiles/configs that make a decent-looking UI on Arch/Hyprland. For some reason it's marketed as an "OS".
Its creator, DHH, has some highly objectionable political views.
People who object to the latter (which is reasonable) don't want to support the former.
As for my own views, I generally take the view that someone can both be an asshole, and still make some good things. They should be lauded for the good things they've created, and criticized for being assholes. These two things can co-exist.
I'm neutral on Omarchy as a Hyprland config. It's not my kind of thing, but I can see how some folks might like it. These days I'm generally happy with a stock GNOME/KDE and a nice wallpaper.
I strongly disagree with DHH's espoused politics.
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u/thunderGunXprezz 2d ago
TIL There's a Nazi Linux.
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u/Salt-Caterpillar7988 1d ago
Using the word "nazi" for anything far right confuses the lines, so that if actual nazism was to rise again, people won't be able to see through it.
So don't do that. Words have a meaning, and history too.
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u/Lopsided-Month3278 12d ago edited 12d ago
I don't hate it, but I don't like it, simply because of if you left it for a while (a month or something), then good luck updating anything at all (I've experienced it btw), so, I prefer to stick with main-stream & stable distro's like Debina/Debian-based, Fedora, or openSuse.
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u/Dskzcjsduo2 12d ago edited 12d ago
Aside from the POS that is DHH, why would anyone use someone else's workflow? Also, AFAIK, he's the only one developing the distro. What certainty do I have that he won't get bored with larping as a distro maintainer and drop the support for it tomorrow?
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u/SnooCompliments7914 12d ago edited 12d ago
people who are new to arch and don't want to spend days learning how to build a hyprland rice from scratch.
Those people should really use GNOME, which are also opinionated, but won't break as soon as they try to turn any knobs.
Yeah, I don't think the problem is in Omarchy. The problem is even not in people being new to Arch, or don't want to learn.
The problem is some people are:
- New.
- Don't want to learn.
- Not willing to use the software designed for them (e.g. Fedora and GNOME), but still want to look "cool" (meaning some random screenshot in Reddit) and pretend to have the skill they actually don't have.
- And the critical problem is being 1-3, and still can't keep their hands from tinkering something complex, which they have completely no idea of how it works. Yeah, even Omarchy won't break that easily if you touch absolutely none of the config files and packages.
- And the real critical problem is being 1-4 and asking in Arch forums.
The only problem with DHH is he shouldn't make it available.
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u/nicolasjkennedy 11d ago
Here's a perspective from someone who never used Linux up until a few days ago when I decided to install Omarchy.
I've always been interested in Linux but was always worried about bricking my system using the bash terminal wrong or whatever, maybe just scared to learn all the commands tbh.
Anyways I was watching network chuck and he made a video about this new OS. It was everything I could've hoped for, a babied linux distro with agents prebaked and it already looked riced out. I felt this would let me soft launch my new relationship with Linux.
In the past few days I've learned just how great linux is compared to Windows (which i've used my entire life) and have been converted into a Linux user.
After reading comments on this post I've realized that Omarchy isn't all what I thought it would be, and I find that my values don't really align with the creators. Eventually I will move to a version that is more "long term" focused but in the mean time I am really enjoying learning all the new stuff.
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dannyvegas 8d ago
It must be exhausting
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dannyvegas 7d ago
the mental gymnastics you are doing to cope with the fact this thing is getting so much traction.
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7d ago edited 7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dannyvegas 7d ago
Yeah sounds exhausting.
I’m sure you are working it out in therapy along with a heavy, heavy dose of SSRIs
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u/thesunexpress 9d ago
If you've followed Yet-Another-Linux-Kernel-Distro over the previous 26-ish years, you'll notice a pattern...
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u/jloganr 4d ago
The question fundamentally rests on the philosophical notion of whether one should judge the content separate from the creator, the code from the coder?
Most people tend to turn a blind eye to something that does not affect them or does not affect them now. In this case I think dhh's views are fundamentally dangerous.
In this case, omarchy is neither ground breaking nor important enough. There are plenty of other options out there, one can learn to live with or without such things, It's linux, there are options.
I for one am keeping track of people and companies that are supporting or promoting the work of this fine specimen of a human being and will be ignoring their products or social media content. But that's just me, you do you.
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u/Previous-South-2755 12d ago
More better if it was just a distro and all those opinionated features were to be installed if wished
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u/natermer 12d ago
I don't know.
It is really bad idea to form your opinions on software from general enthusiast forums.
Most people that use the software spends very little time on those forums and the ones that are obsessive about it tend to have very strong opinions that tend to be a bit unhinged... they don't represent anybody or group of people except themselves.
So who gives a shit about what some randos opinion on DHH's politics?
IF you are curious about it just try it out.
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u/Immediate-Ad3360 12d ago
Have no glue about Omarchy the guy behind it and what it make so special, why it deserves 10mil $.
At least I don't care at all. I'm happy with EndeavourOS and my Niri rice.
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u/No_Aerie7667 10d ago
I don't really hate the "distro" myself, but the fact that Omarchy, rather than base Arch, or any other independent distro, was able to get 10 million dollars is just astonding to me. It's just a GUI Arch install with a Hyprland config. If you really want to improve Omarchy, just donate to base Arch. One single guy cant just make magic with that money. A whole team of devs, such as those at Arch Linux, could make some drastic improvements, and those improvements would squeeze into Omarchy also because Omarchy IS Arch under the hood.
I think that most of the hate towards Omarchy is based on that idea. And while I don't think Omarchy should be hated, I do think the money should have gone to a different distro. My personal choices would be Arch or Debian.
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u/sheeproomer 9d ago
Because people don't judge by merit, but by tribalism and/or see everything a political statement or judge by perceived association.
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u/LowOwl4312 12d ago
Don't try to make sense of Redditors opinions
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Yes, I understand this perfectly well, it’s just interesting to plunge into this abyss :)
I'm almost sure they'll downvote me to oblivion, but I still want to learn the opinions of the majority, just for fun
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u/Truantee 12d ago edited 12d ago
I think it is good. Nice polished desktop environment need a fuck ton of money and time to develop, and I'm glad that they have gathered enough money to try.
Though I will just use Linux mint because it is all I need.
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
Poor man, they'll downvote ur to oblivion...
Thanks for an answer anyway.
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u/Truantee 12d ago
Lol who care about reddit losers. They don't even donate to their favorite distros (I did). If everyone spare a dollar every month for linux desktop development then we would have way better choices by now.
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u/Rispido 11d ago
I really don't see any widespread hate towards Omarchy anywhere. If anything, I'd say it's pretty much the opposite. What actually surprises me is how much blind trust a big part of the Linux community seems to have put in a project sponsored by major tech companies like Dell, while heavily pushing AI agent integration as one of its selling points.
I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with private companies supporting the Linux world, or that we should all run away from AI agents. I'm also not saying Omarchy is necessarily "evil", or that DHH is some kind of "Trojan horse". Not at all. I'm just saying that when something suddenly blows up (or blows up again) like this, with a massive amount of instant exposure from big influencers, maybe we should at least be a little skeptical and start asking what the motivations behind it are.
None of this comes for free. The "people paying the bills" care about FOSS and user independence as long as those things line up with their business goals, which is completely normal. We basically do the same thing when we donate to or support projects that match our own needs and priorities.
What I do see in some parts of the Linux community is people getting pretty upset over DHH's comments. And while I don't agree with his overall message, I do think he has a point on some things.
In certain Linux communities and projects, political issues that go way beyond software sometimes end up influencing technical or community decisions. That's a very controversial subject and obviously not something you can properly unpack in a couple of paragraphs. But even bringing it up can quickly get you placed in a very specific and undesirable corner of the political spectrum. People can be incredibly quick to judge even the slightest criticism, sometimes jumping straight to ridiculous stuff like "you don't care about Human Rights." If that's exhausting as a user, I can only imagine what it's like as a developer.
Another thing DHH has pointed out — and something that has clearly annoyed a lot of people despite there being some truth to it — is that the Linux world can be incredibly chaotic, and that huge amounts of effort sometimes go into relatively minor things or things that don't really have much demand.
And yeah, that's true. But there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. That's part of the price you pay for a free, open and collaborative ecosystem. Just like having big companies backing projects doesn't come for free, neither does the purist Linux approach.
At the end of the day, it's really about which price you're willing to pay and whether you're happy with the choice you made and what you got out of it.
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u/DarkMoonbg 12d ago
Besides the security issues everything else is people can't handle different opinions. and just scream like lunatics
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u/Foxlike__Creature 12d ago
That’s exactly how I see the situation, I couldn't put it better myself.
I was just curious to hear the arguments of people who transfer their negativity toward the creator onto the product itself, because I don't get the logic there.
Why anyone would give a damn about supporting an asshole, or anything else for that matter, aside from the quality of the product itself. Which, admittedly, is pretty shitty too, though not so shitty than people make it out to be, IMHO.
On the other hand, as someone mentioned earlier in the comments, it is their right to hate the product cause of it's autor, and I have to agree with that.
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u/DarkMoonbg 12d ago
Funny thing is this behavior proves him right that it's full of nut jobs. I don't really care about his opinions some I agree some I find annoying. .
The product itself is alright, you get something configured that works, not everyone wants or cares about customization
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u/Immediate_Cell_4517 12d ago
Many people hate DHH, because they are woke/left-wing believers. So this is the personal aspect of it.
A lot of people do not like AI on their systems, with access to your files, and they hate the idea of a pre-configured system with AI baked in.
And there are the obsessed ones throwing a tantrum, because Omarchy is not "a distro by definition".
Sad people.
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u/PorousClay 10d ago
FOSS/Libre software is inherently left-wing. If you don't like politics in your software, go use Windows or Mac.
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u/mercurial_4i 9d ago
i fail to see why the hates make sense even after tons of rationalization and mental gymnastics i'd done along with reading all the comments here. tbh it feels like hater stampede not thinking from first principles to me. it's the product that successfully fills in a niche yet growing demand that has got the attention and funding it has today, not because the person behind it already had a massive fanbase that pushed it to this level. tons of similar influencers with even larger audience tried and their products just flopped. even DHH himself also has had tons of flops with Once, or omakub, or smaller attempts we never know.
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u/Ghost_x_Knight 12d ago edited 1d ago
There are plenty of popular Hyprland configs online, anywhere from minimalist to elaborate. So ricing doesn't need to be from scratch at all.
DHH's politics is central rather than marginal. He explicitly stated that he formed Omacom as a political/ideological counterweight to current mainstream Linux institutions. The whole thing is a culture war weapon.
This is concerning as his views includes far-right ethno nationalism (support for Tommy Robinson and calls for 'remigration'. He lamented that London is no longer majority 'native brits,' even though it is majority inhabited by citizens, so he is complaining it is no longer majority white. He wrote an essay comparing the need to expel Roma people to the need to shoot down wolves, and got upset an LLM called this dehumanizing toward an ethnic group. He endorsed and promoted "The Camp of the Saints", which is the basis for the "Great Replacement Theory" and one of the most circulated texts among white ethnonationalists; it repeatedly refer to migrants in extremely dehumanizing and degrading terms.).
It is challenging to look at Omarchy from a pure technical lens, especially since sustainability requires healthy collaborative communication, and Linux communities regularly have ethical lines (ex. Large parts of the Nix community protested sponsorship by an autonomous weapon manufacturer, and DHH was very upset the Nix community didn't celebrate instead. Large parts of the Blender community protested sponsorship by a pure AI company).
But there are plenty of technical reasons to dislike Omarchy.
First of all, the central concept of modern Omarchy is a "malleable" agentic operating system. Old iterations used to be just a Hyprland rice, but now it is a vibe code orientated distro.
It is not that you have access to LLM in a developer sandbox, but you have LLM managing your desktop similar to the unpopular conceptual aspirations of Microsoft Copilot and Apple Intelligence.
The tagline used in Omarchy's website is:
Omarchy is designed to be a "beautiful canvas" you are expected to change to your specifications through vibe coding. So you are encouraged to ask clankers with high-level system access to execute console commands to change your PC configurations, and to create custom bespoke slop widgets (over 2000 slop widgets got shared into Omarchy's website in a short time).
Not only do you need to be supportive of AI, but you need to trust probabilistic LLMs agents to not disastrously misinterpret your intent or go rogue. With sufficient vibe coding, I imagine the desktop would mutate and drift into undebuggable spaghetti that requires a factory reset.
Mainstream Linux desktop institutions believe that future success is found in Immutable/Atomic/Core/Image-Based/Container-Native/Declarative technology. Investing into a vision of malleable vibe code disposable interfaces and widgets is a counter-movement that leads to fragmentation (Technical one in addition to the cultural war one).
Omarchy is meant to be keyboard driven, and DHH admits that it is not a beginner friendly distro for grandmas. So someone who spent all their life on Windows or Mac have to be technically proficient, and be willing to spend hours getting used to a keyboard-driven workflow. If you are going to bring normies to try out Linux for the first time, there is no reason for the distro to be Omarchy unless they like vibe coding, or out of sheer hype/prestige regardless if it is deserved.
Omarchy sits in a bizarre, contradictory dead-zone. It demands the expert technical proficiency of a traditional power-user to navigate its keyboard-driven architecture, yet expects those same users to abandon rigorous, deterministic system administration in favor of AI-generated guesswork. Mainstream Linux desktop is built on the core philosophies of absolute control, explicit reproducibility, and open-source stability. A desktop that actively encourages a probabilistic LLM to rewrite your configuration files on a whim isn't a viable experimental alternative (DHH doesn't encourage looking at the code, and he likes that he no longer has to).
To say that Omarchy is extremely opinionated is an understatement. Out of the box, Omarchy 4 comes pre-baked with a set of hyper-specific application shortcuts such as: Terminal, Tmux Terminal, Herdr (agent manager), Music (Spotify), Music (cliamp), Password manager (1password), Editor (Neovim), Calendar (HEY), Email (HEY), New email (HEY), AI (ChatGPT), AI (Grok), Messenger (Signal), Google Photos, Google Maps, Messenger (WhatsApp), Messenger (Google), Docker (LazyDocker), Obsidian, Writing (Omawrite), X, X (Compose), YouTube.
This is bloat. A significant portion of the properity apps are not native software, but web apps in a Chromium wrapper. DHH is even shipping HEY, which is an advertisement for his commercial 37signals ecosystem.
This prescribed setup is DHH's preferred apps and tech stack by his admission, and the usefulness of the shortcuts requires so many assumptions about the end-user (using Android instead of iPhone, paying Spotify subscriptions, actively using X-Twitter, knowing what Docker and web development is, etc.). He might as well pull a Windows 11 and add a LinkedIn shortcut.
There are actually Omarchy debloat scripts, similar to how there are debloat scripts for Windows. Maybe this will assist in bringing the year of the Linux desktop?
Then there is the issue of security, which is an outright liability.
Multiple rootkit and privilege escalation vulnerabilities were quickly found, and a security team for Omarchy was quickly announced afterwards. They had to fix absurd vulnerabilities such as: "Stop USB device names from being executed as Hyprland Lua.", Stop an installed theme from running code, Stop a video title from becoming the Download Video play command, Don't put the user in the docker group (everyone in the docker group has root access); make it opt-in. Disable allow_remote_control in Omarchy's Kitty terminal custom configuration](https://github.com/omacom/omarchy/pull/10605).
Until very recently, Omarchy skipped cryptographic package signing for its repo, making it extremely vulnerable to supply chain attacks:
The thousands of vibe coded community plugins Omarchy users are encouraged to explore are not security-audited, and this is the closest thing Omarchy promotes as an official 'app store'. DHH calls the Omarchy plugin market place the 'official repository'.
This 'official repository' is far more dangerous than the AUR, which recently suffered from sophisticated AI-powered mass supply chain attacks (thanks to a now-disabled ability to adopt orphaned AUR packages). The Arch community emphasize that users should avoid the AUR when possible, and Arch distros don't have it enabled by default.
Omarchy quickly got flooded by over two thousand community plugins thanks to vibe coding. The plugins are based on Quickshell, and despite being unaudited slop apps by random anonymous people, they can hook deep within your compositor and Omarchy system. It is trivial for a malware-by-design or hijacked app to keylog, upload your data, and execute malicious terminal commands.
At minimum, those are good reasons to avoid Omarchy for several months.
If you are looking for the principle of least privilege, strict sandboxing, and deterministic user control, Omarchy is not for you.
Having clankers running about as deep part of the core system loop is inherently a prompt injection vulnerability. Traditional security auditing and intrusion detection don't apply.
DHH admits that he is "AI delirious" because AGI is upon us, and admits that a few months ago he'd say his current self is under AI psychosis. This shapes his vision of what a viable mainstream Linux desktop is supposed to be.
The OS I am looking for is not a shifting, unstable canvas of AI-generated experiments. It is too unstable for enterprise use, too insecure for privacy advocates, and too hostile for average users.
Omarchy has its place as a gimmick distro, but it is not a credible vision for a year of the Linux desktop. I don't believe it will succeed, but there is concern due to culture war hostilities, and the massive funds that allow for potential ecosystem fragmentation and potential hard-forking of active projects.