It’s a new distro that’s putting effort into marketing. The last time I saw a distro really market was Ubuntu, nearly 20 years ago.
Anything that gets people in the door is a good thing.
I ran Omarchy for a few days, but switched over to Fedora after a few security incidents were announced. A vibe coded system made me nervous, but I was trying to put my vibe coding prejudices aside.
There are dozens of distros out there that are little more than a specific desktop environment with a new customizations and a theme. Hating on Omarchy any more than the others doesn’t make too much sense to me.
Omarchy is popular for the same reason Manjaro was popular, people want Arch without the time, decisions, and maintenance of starting from nothing.
It also did look pretty cool, and the themes were a nice touch. Most people don’t have the patience to do all of that themselves.
All that said, I don’t think Omarchy is going to be the gateway to Linux for the mainstream. Coming with a timing window manager will scare away most average users… or frustrate them into leaving. Very few people want a learning curve on moving a window around.
The Linux community as a whole can learn something from all this. Make stuff look cool, easy to use, and add in a little marketing, and it will get a lot of attention. Also, that last 10% to take something from functional to smooth and enjoyable matters a lot. It seems like Linux has always had trouble with that, as not a lot of people want to do that finishing work. If they do a really good job, no one will notice. People only notice when it’s bad.
Anything that gets people in the door is a good thing.
I ran Omarchy for a few days, but switched over to Fedora after a few security incidents were announced. A vibe coded system made me nervous, but I was trying to put my vibe coding prejudices aside.
There are dozens of distros out there that are little more than a specific desktop environment with a new customizations and a theme. Hating on Omarchy any more than the others doesn’t make too much sense to me.
Omarchy is popular for the same reason Manjaro was popular, people want Arch without the time, decisions, and maintenance of starting from nothing.
It also did look pretty cool, and the themes were a nice touch. Most people don’t have the patience to do all of that themselves.
All that said, I don’t think Omarchy is going to be the gateway to Linux for the mainstream. Coming with a timing window manager will scare away most average users… or frustrate them into leaving. Very few people want a learning curve on moving a window around.
The Linux community as a whole can learn something from all this. Make stuff look cool, easy to use, and add in a little marketing, and it will get a lot of attention. Also, that last 10% to take something from functional to smooth and enjoyable matters a lot. It seems like Linux has always had trouble with that, as not a lot of people want to do that finishing work. If they do a really good job, no one will notice. People only notice when it’s bad.