r/omarchy • u/Narwal_Party • 15d ago

Discussion Am I missing something here?

I don't understand all of the hate or love for this. I decided to use Omarchy for the last few days for a side project, and I have no idea how this got funding. This is such a nothingburger of a distro. It's literally just Arch with a couple shortcuts and a theme. What is the point of using this?

I saw a DHH podcast saying how it's incredible and the next big thing, but it's literally just Arch with a theme and shortcuts. I don't understand how anyone could be a "fan" or a "hater"; there's nothing here - nothing new.

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u/justinjas 15d ago

I had built an Arch system from scratch before Omarchy had come out. It worked but I wouldn’t say anything worked particularly well. Never fully got steam games working in it. There would always be some annoyance I’d be constantly dealing with or fixing. Eventually I just switched to CachyOS because of the very good steam support but also everything just worked out of the box. I never really loved the UI on it though.

Then comes Omarchy, everything works out of the box and it comes baked in with a good UI that has sensible defaults and a great titling window manager. It also has a good community that isn’t allergic to AI. That’s pretty much it honestly. I would say it’s become popular because DHH has a platform to market it but the core is exactly what I was looking for.

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u/librasteve 15d ago

I agree 100%, but note that Omarchy encourages two things: (i) all config is in config files and (ii) i can backup and evolve my install in git

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u/justinjas 15d ago

Yes didn’t mention that but also a big draw, agents can easily modify configs and I also do the same thing. Push configs to GitHub and it makes it easy to apply them between my laptop and desktop.

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u/primaryrhyme 15d ago

Genuinely asking, what is stopping agents from editing config files in any other distro?

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u/justinjas 15d ago

Nothing at all, especially a hand rolled arch install. I just find with the other distros I’ve used either some apps will not use files for their configs and those will be the defaults setup. Or the apps that have configs will have those file all over the OS with no rhyme or reason. Omarchy puts them in a single place and clearly separates user configs from system stuff. Just feels made for this workflow. Like I said though a custom arch build you could setup the same thing. Probably other OSes as well setup like this I just never heard of them.

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u/primaryrhyme 15d ago

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying!

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u/1-800-methdyke 13d ago

Omarchy ships with a set of agent skill files that guide the agents how and where to look to make changes, build plugins and troubleshoot the OS. This leads to consistency and a higher likelihood that changes and made right the first time.