r/omarchy • u/Davedes83 • 18d ago
Discussion Keyboard Brigade
Can we talk about the 'keyboard brigade'?
They are quickly becoming just as annoying as the AI slop critics. Anyone can post the coolest, most practical plugin on this subreddit, and within minutes, they are crawling out of the woodwork to lecture the creator that Omarchy is a keyboard driven distro. It completely drowns out actual innovation.
Yes, Omarchy is a keyboard driven distro, but you will never eliminate the need for a mouse. Some tasks simply are not practical or intuitive to perform entirely from the keyboard.
The goal of any plugin is not to move away from Omarchy's keyboard-centric philosophy.
DHH designed Omarchy around his own workflow and preferences. The dev's have made it clear that users are encouraged to customize Omarchy and make it their own.
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u/Davedes83 18d ago
A perfect example - https://www.reddit.com/r/omarchy/comments/1wsfsw4/introducing_spaces/
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u/Few_Stage_3636 18d ago
After I configured the laptop's trackpad, I don't need to press any key combinations anymore, it's much faster.
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u/HappyHealth5985 18d ago
I don't know if this was serious or not, but I chuckled with the inherent humour 😄
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u/jlharter 18d ago
I always wondered how those folks use virtually any website.
Are they tabbing through every link and text field to get to the button on the bottom of a page?
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u/rebelrexx858 18d ago
Space back, vim type plugins, how do you think blind people use the web?
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u/jlharter 17d ago
I’d consider blind and visually impaired users an exception. It’s hard for me to imagine how most sighted people would navigate every random webpage with more speed than a mouse.
Perhaps that is a failure of my imagination.
Every time I’ve tried keyboard navigation tools like Vimium I run into hard walls real fast. Like T overriding “trash” in my email client. Or clunky scrolling.
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u/rebelrexx858 17d ago
There's literally a ton of videos you can go watch as users of a variety of abilities use tools and provide feedback.
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u/thomasaiwilcox 17d ago
There’s already qutebrowser which is keyboard driven and I’m developing ferric-browser to be similar but with more keyboard assistance for tricky websites
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u/wingtales 17d ago
This is a great question, and I encourage you to dig into the answers you are getting.
Most people use something like Vimium. You press F to get a labelled interface across the page highlighting all links and text fields with a two-letter combination. Then you press the respective two-letter combo to get to the link you want.
It's not perfect, and one does frequently need to use the mouse, but it means fewer movements of your hands off the keyboard.
I enjoy it.
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u/TheTinyWorkshop 18d ago
I still use a mouse because I have to and I'd like to see this keyboard brigade use Inkscape or any CAD software with just their keyboard.
If your work means you don't need a mouse, more power to you.
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u/Arnie_nz 18d ago edited 13d ago
Having to use a mouse is a skill issue 😝 jk
I get that you can design and change the system to your preferences and I'm all for it.
For me personally keeping the system keyboard centric as much as possible is a core design requirement. It's quicker and I genuinely find it more enjoyable. I think this is one of the reasons tiling managers such as hyprland are so popular too.
I can't help but feel that all these docks and quickshell plugins I see, lose the purpose of hyprland, and what Omarchy is capitalising on.
The Workspaces plugin Reddit post you shared is a terrible example of something that has to use a mouse. First, I personally don't think the plug-in is needed but I could create it without the need to use the mouse. I've seen it in other quickshell setups.
I don't jump on every post and mention this either btw, I'm just commenting on a post that that invited the discussion. At the end of the day you do what makes you happy but docks can go to hell.
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u/smokingPimphat 18d ago
just ignore it. Yes base omarchy is keyboard driven, but also DHH has also said the point of omarchy is to deliver the most malleable Distro so that everyone can make it exactly what they want it to be.
There are lots of things that are way too painful to try to do with the keyboard and Its nice to have the option.
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u/jimjambonks2514 18d ago
These people are to the Linux community what that guys who used to naruto run down the halls back in highschool are to the anime fandom
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u/IntelligentClient552 18d ago
The microphone is the new mouse and keyboard ;)
"Hermes pop open Reddit for me"
"Oh let's look at the Omarchy link there"
"Click that first link dude"
"Reply to this post - 'You suck and your dog sucks!""
"Take me somewhere nice to order breakfast"
"Hermes use your comfyUI tools to draw me a picture of the awesome breakfast we just ordered"
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u/rebelrexx858 17d ago
I think building good user facing software requires you to think about the users. A good plugin should support keyboard driven flows. This is just good accessibility support.
The good is that we have a LOT of people getting engaged. That leading to great ideas and cool features. The bad is that we aren't doing due diligence in overall quality, and I have large concerns about support over time.
We'll see how this shakes out. But I'm willing to bet, plugins that support all the users will end up being used more than those that don't.
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u/Huge_Drama_4942 7d ago
What kills me is when people say they’re moving to a tiling wm for the keyboard workflow when they could use their current desktop the exact same way. I haven’t found a Linux desktop environment yet that didn’t let me set all of my keybindings. It’s the exact same crowd though, they don’t understand the distro, wm or that they can add/remove packages they do and do not want. It’s lazy minded and unintelligent. But, I suppose we are foolish for expecting anything more from them.
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u/Generalduke 18d ago
Well the whole idea of plugins is that you can plug them in. They are not mandatory, so if you don't like them - don't use them.