omarchy: i get the appeal, but it's not for me

a personal take on curated linux experiences and why i prefer building my own setup

•Karol Broda•8 min read

i've been watching omarchy unfold with a mix of fascination and skepticism. it's the latest project from david heinemeier hansson — you know, the rails guy — and it's basically his take on what an arch linux setup should look like. polished, opinionated, ready-to-go. no endless config tweaking, no reddit deep dives, just install and you're set.

when i first saw the screenshots, i thought "that looks pretty clean." and the whole "omakase arch" concept — chef's choice meets rolling release — it's clever. but after years moving between distros, i keep coming back to the same thought: this isn't the linux i want.

the appeal

omarchy takes arch linux and wraps it in a very specific vision. it's built around hyprland, wayland, and a bunch of tools that assume you work a certain way. keyboard-driven, tiling windows, the whole vim/tmux aesthetic dialed up to eleven. install it and you've got a cohesive, beautiful system without touching a config file.

and honestly? it works. the documentation is solid, the discord is active, and when it works, it really works. there's something satisfying about opening your laptop and seeing:

it's the anti-arch in a way. arch says "here's the base, you figure it out." omarchy says "here's the experience, enjoy it." for developers coming from macos or who just want to code instead of configure, that's compelling.

where i hesitate

here's where i get uncomfortable: it's about what you give up when someone else makes all the choices for you.

i remember the first time i installed arch. it took me three attempts, i broke my bootloader twice (among other things), and i learned more about linux in those 14 hours than i had in months of using ubuntu. every config file i edited, every package i installed, every driver i wrestled with — it all built up this mental model of how the system actually works.

those struggles taught me to actually understand my system. and yeah, i eventually moved on from arch — these days i run nixos because i wanted that same level of control but with better reproducibility — but the point is that the friction was valuable. it forced me to learn.

with omarchy, that learning curve gets flattened. which is great if you're trying to ship code, but i worry about what happens when something breaks and you don't know why. it's like driving a car where you can't pop the hood. sure, it gets you places, but when the engine makes a weird noise, you're stuck calling someone else.

the update treadmill

and then there's the pace. omarchy moves fast — it's built on arch, so that's expected, but the scripting layer on top adds another dimension. things change quickly, configurations get updated, and if you're not paying attention, your perfectly working setup can suddenly feel different.

i've been there with other "batteries included" distros. you get comfortable, then one update later your workflow is disrupted. sometimes it's a feature, sometimes it's just change for change's sake. either way, it leaves you feeling like you're renting your setup instead of owning it.

the philosophy question

arch linux has always been about the journey. the wiki, the forums, the whole "do it yourself" ethos — it's not just tradition, it's the point. you learn linux by building it, piece by piece, understanding why each component exists.

omarchy takes that and says "actually, you don't need to understand all that." which is fine if linux is just a tool for you. but for me, it's always been a system worth understanding, not just using. i see this pattern in other places too — rails making web dev decisions for you, vscode trying to be everything to everyone. sometimes that works brilliantly, sometimes it leaves you wondering why your setup doesn't work the way you expect.

a different kind of freedom

look, if omarchy helps more people use linux comfortably, that's a win. the ecosystem needs more entry points. but i also don't want us to forget what makes linux special — that feeling when you finally get pulseaudio working, or when you write your first systemd service, or when you realize "oh, that's how the init system actually works." those moments of understanding are worth something.

i'll keep watching omarchy from the sidelines, learning from what they get right. but my own setup? i'll keep building it myself, because that's the linux that taught me how to think about systems.

linux is big enough for both approaches — curated experiences and diy journeys. as long as we remember that each path teaches you something different, we're good.