Giving Omarchy a Shot

If you’re at all involved in the web development, Ruby/Rails, Linux, or general tech community you’ve probably heard of Omarchy - a new “opinionated Arch + Hyprland Setup” by DHH - CTO at 37 Signals and creator of Ruby on Rails.

I have been using Linux for the better part of two decades, but these days only as a server operating system. I haven’t really used Linux on the Desktop in nearly ten years - MacOS has just been too good and I haven’t had the time or energy to maintain a Linux desktop environment.

About a year ago DHH released Omakub - a special configuration of Ubuntu designed for Software Development. I followed the Omakub development and was excited to see people giving Linux on the Desktop some more love, especially people like DHH that evangelized MacOS for decades. But have been too happy with MacOS. The hardware is too freaking good. I don’t like the direction Apple has been taking it, but so far everything they have changed I can still “undo” or configure to my liking.

Omakub peaked my interest, but Omarchy has truly captured it. The attention to detail in Omarchy is fantastic and it looks like it provides a refined experience out-of-the-box.

I guess I am technically new to Arch. I have been “using” Arch by way of SteamOS on my Steam Deck for a couple of years, but I have never run mainline Arch Linux. This still feels like Arch on training wheels, but that’s OK. Between parenting, work, running, reading, and everything else in my life - training wheels sound great right now.

I do almost all of my computing on my Macs these days, but I do have a Desktop PC running Windows 10 that I use for playing games. I have been trying to decide what to do with it given the looming Windows 10 end-of-life. There is no better time than now to give Omarchy an honest try. So I just bought a new SSD (Samsung 990 Pro 2TB) to throw in my Desktop PC that will be dedicated to Omarchy. If I love it, I will wipe the old one with Windows 10 on it.

I’m unhappy with the direction of MacOS. I am unhappy with Windows 11. I have been wanting to try Arch on the desktop for a while. I have been wanting to try Wayland. It’s a perfect storm, and Omarchy is how I am going to ride it out.