These criticisms all feel very nitpicky and subjective. So many of them seem to boil down to, "this is an opinionated configuration, but their opinions differ from my opinions."
This part was where I stopped taking the article seriously:
>Moreover, taking into account that the system relies heavily on sudo (instead of the more modern doas), and also considering that the default installation configures the maximum number of password retries to 10 (instead of the more cautious limit of three), it raises an important question: Does Omarchy care about security?
This is such a reflexive and petty critique. How many real world security breaches happened because a login prompt that requires physical access limited to 10 tries instead of the "more cautious" limit of 3? And do you even care about security at all unless you limit to the even more cautious limit of 2?
Moreover, the entire Omarchy ecosystem is held together by often poorly written Bash scripts that lack any structure, let alone properly defined interfaces. Software packages are being installed via curl | sh or similar mechanisms, rather than provided as properly packaged solutions via a package manager. Hansson is quick to label Omarchy a Linux distribution, yet he seems reluctant to engage with the foundational work that defines a true distribution: The development and proper packaging (“distribution”) of software.
Because it's opinionated? So maybe there are scripts that use sudo, and perhaps he needs more than 3 tries to fat-finger his password?
Personally, my opinion, I use sudo, and if I take more than 3 goes then I deserve a timeout to get my act together. Anyway, 10 attempts isn't enough to brute-force a decent password, and if bruteforcing is a concern then add 2FA codes or hardware.
There's more serious concerns in the article though - the part about the screensaver / hyprlock? That's just security theatre.
I’m all in for opinionated software, but not in the cases it is made by people… (if not vibe-coded, lol) by incompetent people. That’s what the article is about if you were to read it longer than you mentioned. Great that you are the top comment, summarises this community for me.
>This is such a reflexive and petty critique. How many real world security breaches happened because a login prompt that requires physical access limited to 10 tries instead of the "more cautious" limit of 3?
> Omarchy takes security extremely seriously. This is meant to be an operating system that you can use to do Real Work in the Real World. Where losing a laptop can’t lead to a security emergency.
lol Are you saying that a distro that makes this kind of claim shouldn't be concerned with the amount of times you can type in a wrong password? Especially since it's not vetting that actual security of the password itself?
How many times does your bank allow you to type in the wrong password? Is it 10? Cmon.
Agree with this 100%. The article reads as a super gatekeepy “he made different choices than me so I’m going to trash it and him” piece. The author’s perspective seems to be “how dare he use bash scripts! REAL programmers use system level languages”. Come on buddy.
Author claims there is no structure to the project but one look in the GitHub repo says there clearly is. Also, how many users will now try Arch (or Ubuntu via Omakub) as a result of this? If the answer is a positive number and DHH wants to put his time and weight behind it, that’s a good thing.
No one should use this script, EVER. It's a disaster waiting to happen. DHH is a fucking liar, it's not even a distro and he's ripping off the hard work of Arch and several other open source projects and using it as his own creation
I'm a long term Linux user (since 2003) and I have a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 13th Gen sitting here with a blank boot medium and I have to decide what to install as an OS now. Ubuntu again? Fedora maybe due to more recent drivers? Omarchy due to - why not?
> After initially downloading the official ISO file, the first boot of the system greets you with a terminal window informing you that it needs to update a few packages. And by “a few” it means another 1.8GB. I’m still not entirely sure why the v3.0.2 ISO is a hefty 6.2GB, or why it requires downloading an additional 1.8GB after installation on a system with internet access. For comparison, the official Arch installer image is just 1.4GB in size.
That is interesting.
I would respect the article a lot more if it spent words on actually investigating things like this, rather than repeated nitpicking.
The author is remarkably negative without actually trying to help anything. The globbing is borked on some shell scripts in a very young Linux distribution? Submit a pull request rather than writing a blog post.
And then the tab changes its name to something dumb when you leave to try to get you to disable JS.
They're mad things come pre-installed. They're mad things don't. They just like being mad.
OK, I have to admit I cracked up and lost it at "Dude's got the vibe of a cat." That's such a great line with such rich, pointed meaning packed into only a few words.
Besides the gatekeeping, "imperfect" and "unserious" tools can be valid so that people try the thing. "Do your research and try elsewhere" hasn't worked so far, has it?
It is so sad to see so many people -- including the article, to an extent -- and also people in the comments cast shade on this distro and the people who may try Linux either for the first time, or perhaps one more time, because they tried and failed to switch before.
Calling it flashy is an especially amusing critique. You couldn't kick your way through the 90s and 2000s without the endless parade of semi-transparent terminal windows running on various shades of windowmaker, enlightenment, kde, etc. all to show off how much more advanced the graphics pipeline and customisation was compared to Windows or Mac at the time. So this is hardly a new thing.
Let's hope this distro picks up steam; that it helps convert people who are fed up with Apple and Microsoft to another way of doing things. Arch + hyprland is a fine place to start.
> You couldn't kick your way through the 90s and 2000s without the endless parade of semi-transparent terminal windows running on various shades of windowmaker, enlightenment, kde, etc. all to show off how much more advanced the graphics pipeline and customisation was compared to Windows or Mac at the time. So this is hardly a new thing.
What does this even mean with respect to the article?
I've found Pop!_OS 24.04 beta, with COSMIC, to be more suitable for my preferences than Omarchy. You get the best of both worlds -- hybrid tiling experience. You can toggle between tiling (like Hyprland) and regular desktop environment (like GNOME).
This blog pranks you with changing titles when you switch tabs (some nsfw), then welcomes you back with a paragraph inciting you to disable Javascript. That's nice, but I actually need Javascript in my browser to do real stuff.
It's like 3 lengthy paragraphs that don't even get to the point until the end. The writing wasn't particularly good in the first place, so I just closed the tab when I saw that.
I felt just a tiny bit violated by that. Why does this person care about whether I have JS enabled? What’s the term for author’s affliction? Militant techno-minimalism?
The cynicism is also pretty strong, in the first call-out, asking HN audience to jump to the TLDR, because?
The author seems very set on following "the proper way of doing things in the linux ecosystem". If I remember correctly, a key principle from Linus himself is: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code". So did the author open any PR to fix any of the issues he surfaced ?
I guess Omarchy looks cool but I remember Linux distros being just as cool in 2002 with Enlightenment and many other custom scripts and setups. Unfortunately, Linux on the desktop hasn't moved on much.
On the contrary, linux desktops have IMHO vastly regressed since then (in regards to "cool" factor). I remember when the compiz cube desktop was everywhere; now it feels like everything is bland in comparison.
> Omarchy feels like a project created by a Linux newcomer, utterly captivated by all the cool things that Linux can do, but lacking the architectural knowledge to get the basics right
I've used Omarchy over the last few months and I don't think this is a fair assessment of the project. Sure, it definitely fells hacky in some places but I don't think it's that bad.
Even though I don't fully agree with the article, I think the conclusion is right. If you already knows your way around linux, Omarchy probably won't be a good option for you in the long term.
I fully switched to linux around 2008 and never looked back. I went through most of the major distos, from Gentoo to Ubuntu. I'm not an expert, but I have a pretty good understanding of how things work under the hood.
Even with all this knowledge I stumbled upon a bug that I wasn't even sure on how to start debugging. In my desktop I have 2 monitors and when the system wakes up from sleep my secondary monitor starts up faster than my main monitor and this puts them in the wrong order, as if I had swapped them left-to-right.
This is a trivial issue, I'm sure that ChatGPT could guide me through this issue in no time. But it made me realize that if I choose to stick with Omarchy I will need re-learn a lot of things, I will need to learn about several new tools and configuration schemas. And I don't want to do it right now, that's not a good time investment for me. Especially if there are no guarantees these tools will still be relevant in 10 years.
And this is why I'll be switching back to old and boring Fedora.
The author recommends using "Do Not Track", but this has been deprecated for some time. Safari and Firefox have both removed the option completely. Perhaps the author meant GPC?
For all of the security suggestions in this article I was also surprised to see the author recommending ungoogle-chromium, which has a number of security issues. See: https://qua3k.github.io/ungoogled/
The primary issue I take with the article is the chosen tone. I think there are ways that these points could have been made without being overly cynical and negative. I think speaking authoritatively throughout the article has the effect of equating the importance of subjective preferences (like the choice of which terminal emulator to include), with legitimate security concerns (bash shortcomings, migrations, firewall misconfiguration, piping curl | sh to install software).
I wouldn't use Omarchy, but I am glad it exists. It's bringing more people into the desktop Linux ecosystem, which should be positive sum. Omarchy comes off to me as a little hacky and immature, but at this stage that seems.. mostly fine? Perhaps they should be more clear about that in their marketing, but I understand the goals and I admire the enthusiasm from DHH.
> And by “a few” it means another 1.8GB. I’m still not entirely sure why the v3.0.2 ISO is a hefty 6.2GB, or why it requires downloading an additional 1.8GB after installation on a system with internet access.
hello, can you share the lobsters forum invite with me?
I checked your portfolio and see the socials we used together, I also have X account.
my X: frontendhashira
I am surprised Omarchy got such a large audience, DHH had already dropped an opinionated Ubuntu 'distro' - Omakub - but seemingly didn't gain popularity.
Even though I haven't used it, I don't mind Omarchy existing if it works. I had issues with omakub when I had tried it in the distant past.
That said, I think a lot of peoples criticism of DHH and Omarchy is based on their personal opinions of DHH or that they don't like that an opinionated Arch variant is opinionated, which is a bit of a ridiculous criticism too.
tl;dr of the summary: Omarchy is a toy, not a proper tool, and dangerously "naive".
Why is even the summary longer than most articles nowadays? I will maybe read te full article later, but probably will just let it rot on my pile of readlaters.
Is this enough trash-talk now? Is the Pro-tip pleased?
The gap this fills is simple: those who just want a flashy arch installation to post on socials. These people have no concerns about quality because they haven’t used Linux extensively and aren’t using their OS for genuine work.
Also the tech-influencers like tj and primeagen hyping this hard. I sometime wonder when out industry went to shit. Its all AI slop and hype influencers these days.
mtlynch|4 months ago
This part was where I stopped taking the article seriously:
>Moreover, taking into account that the system relies heavily on sudo (instead of the more modern doas), and also considering that the default installation configures the maximum number of password retries to 10 (instead of the more cautious limit of three), it raises an important question: Does Omarchy care about security?
This is such a reflexive and petty critique. How many real world security breaches happened because a login prompt that requires physical access limited to 10 tries instead of the "more cautious" limit of 3? And do you even care about security at all unless you limit to the even more cautious limit of 2?
pizzooid|4 months ago
Moreover, the entire Omarchy ecosystem is held together by often poorly written Bash scripts that lack any structure, let alone properly defined interfaces. Software packages are being installed via curl | sh or similar mechanisms, rather than provided as properly packaged solutions via a package manager. Hansson is quick to label Omarchy a Linux distribution, yet he seems reluctant to engage with the foundational work that defines a true distribution: The development and proper packaging (“distribution”) of software.
antonyh|4 months ago
Personally, my opinion, I use sudo, and if I take more than 3 goes then I deserve a timeout to get my act together. Anyway, 10 attempts isn't enough to brute-force a decent password, and if bruteforcing is a concern then add 2FA codes or hardware.
There's more serious concerns in the article though - the part about the screensaver / hyprlock? That's just security theatre.
wltr|4 months ago
Foxboron|4 months ago
https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/blob/master/default/pacm...
Fire-Dragon-DoL|4 months ago
I find somewhat ironic that he calls out the security aspect of it without considering the audience.
I feel the tracking for advertising is a lot more a security issue than it is the chances of somebody brute forcing a laptop password
mexicocitinluez|4 months ago
God, this comment is funny to me. This is pulled straight from this website (https://learn.omacom.io/2/the-omarchy-manual/93/security)
> Omarchy takes security extremely seriously. This is meant to be an operating system that you can use to do Real Work in the Real World. Where losing a laptop can’t lead to a security emergency.
lol Are you saying that a distro that makes this kind of claim shouldn't be concerned with the amount of times you can type in a wrong password? Especially since it's not vetting that actual security of the password itself?
How many times does your bank allow you to type in the wrong password? Is it 10? Cmon.
neeeeeeal|4 months ago
Author claims there is no structure to the project but one look in the GitHub repo says there clearly is. Also, how many users will now try Arch (or Ubuntu via Omakub) as a result of this? If the answer is a positive number and DHH wants to put his time and weight behind it, that’s a good thing.
udev4096|4 months ago
chinathrow|4 months ago
I'm a long term Linux user (since 2003) and I have a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 13th Gen sitting here with a blank boot medium and I have to decide what to install as an OS now. Ubuntu again? Fedora maybe due to more recent drivers? Omarchy due to - why not?
That article helped - the flagging? Not so much.
Kon5ole|4 months ago
Probably the juvenile title-altering script that could get people in trouble depending on where they’re from.
mexicocitinluez|4 months ago
Because there are a lot of DHH fanboys on this site.
It's a tad ironic that critiquing the OS of one a guy who thinks he's fighting for "free speech"* gets flagged. lol.
*He doesn't know what free speech actually is as evidenced by his support of Trump and Elon.
pityJuke|4 months ago
Either way, I appreciate the opinionated and researched review. It was a good read, and certainly highlighted some of the ways Omarchy is… odd.
(Also, the JavaScript is annoying, especially when reading on a phone which backgrounds the tab when you lock it…)
zahlman|4 months ago
That is interesting.
I would respect the article a lot more if it spent words on actually investigating things like this, rather than repeated nitpicking.
donatj|4 months ago
The author is remarkably negative without actually trying to help anything. The globbing is borked on some shell scripts in a very young Linux distribution? Submit a pull request rather than writing a blog post.
And then the tab changes its name to something dumb when you leave to try to get you to disable JS.
They're mad things come pre-installed. They're mad things don't. They just like being mad.
Dudes got the vibe of a cat.
freehorse|4 months ago
wyclif|4 months ago
slig|4 months ago
mickeyp|4 months ago
Calling it flashy is an especially amusing critique. You couldn't kick your way through the 90s and 2000s without the endless parade of semi-transparent terminal windows running on various shades of windowmaker, enlightenment, kde, etc. all to show off how much more advanced the graphics pipeline and customisation was compared to Windows or Mac at the time. So this is hardly a new thing.
Let's hope this distro picks up steam; that it helps convert people who are fed up with Apple and Microsoft to another way of doing things. Arch + hyprland is a fine place to start.
timeon|4 months ago
mexicocitinluez|4 months ago
What does this even mean with respect to the article?
stephaner|4 months ago
I don't understand why the link is now [flagged] by HN?
freehorse|4 months ago
srid|4 months ago
https://srid.ca/pop-os
paulglx|4 months ago
sorcercode|4 months ago
fwiw, it's trivially easy to block javascript per site today with uBlock Origin. Firefox + UBlock Origin really is the panacea of a de-shittified web.
chinathrow|4 months ago
bloppe|4 months ago
zahlman|4 months ago
Do modern browsers even still offer the built-in option to disable JavaScript unilaterally?
slightwinder|4 months ago
mattbettinson|4 months ago
manmal|4 months ago
The cynicism is also pretty strong, in the first call-out, asking HN audience to jump to the TLDR, because?
boesboes|4 months ago
IMTDb|4 months ago
mexicocitinluez|4 months ago
sgt|4 months ago
yjftsjthsd-h|4 months ago
breckenedge|4 months ago
nzach|4 months ago
I've used Omarchy over the last few months and I don't think this is a fair assessment of the project. Sure, it definitely fells hacky in some places but I don't think it's that bad.
Even though I don't fully agree with the article, I think the conclusion is right. If you already knows your way around linux, Omarchy probably won't be a good option for you in the long term.
I fully switched to linux around 2008 and never looked back. I went through most of the major distos, from Gentoo to Ubuntu. I'm not an expert, but I have a pretty good understanding of how things work under the hood.
Even with all this knowledge I stumbled upon a bug that I wasn't even sure on how to start debugging. In my desktop I have 2 monitors and when the system wakes up from sleep my secondary monitor starts up faster than my main monitor and this puts them in the wrong order, as if I had swapped them left-to-right.
This is a trivial issue, I'm sure that ChatGPT could guide me through this issue in no time. But it made me realize that if I choose to stick with Omarchy I will need re-learn a lot of things, I will need to learn about several new tools and configuration schemas. And I don't want to do it right now, that's not a good time investment for me. Especially if there are no guarantees these tools will still be relevant in 10 years.
And this is why I'll be switching back to old and boring Fedora.
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
bryceneal|4 months ago
For all of the security suggestions in this article I was also surprised to see the author recommending ungoogle-chromium, which has a number of security issues. See: https://qua3k.github.io/ungoogled/
The primary issue I take with the article is the chosen tone. I think there are ways that these points could have been made without being overly cynical and negative. I think speaking authoritatively throughout the article has the effect of equating the importance of subjective preferences (like the choice of which terminal emulator to include), with legitimate security concerns (bash shortcomings, migrations, firewall misconfiguration, piping curl | sh to install software).
I wouldn't use Omarchy, but I am glad it exists. It's bringing more people into the desktop Linux ecosystem, which should be positive sum. Omarchy comes off to me as a little hacky and immature, but at this stage that seems.. mostly fine? Perhaps they should be more clear about that in their marketing, but I understand the goals and I admire the enthusiasm from DHH.
timeon|4 months ago
Sounds like bloatware.
bsnnkv|4 months ago
maxen|4 months ago
JokerDan|4 months ago
Even though I haven't used it, I don't mind Omarchy existing if it works. I had issues with omakub when I had tried it in the distant past.
https://omakub.org/
That said, I think a lot of peoples criticism of DHH and Omarchy is based on their personal opinions of DHH or that they don't like that an opinionated Arch variant is opinionated, which is a bit of a ridiculous criticism too.
phplovesong|4 months ago
slightwinder|4 months ago
Why is even the summary longer than most articles nowadays? I will maybe read te full article later, but probably will just let it rot on my pile of readlaters.
Is this enough trash-talk now? Is the Pro-tip pleased?
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
isodev|4 months ago
pelagicAustral|4 months ago
mfro|4 months ago
pinkgolem|4 months ago
Much nicer configuration then fedora/Ubuntu for productivity.
And be assured, i have not posted a single screenshot anywhere.
unknown|4 months ago
[deleted]
sph|4 months ago
They’ll move to something serious like vanilla Arch, Debian or Fedora soon enough
mickeyp|4 months ago
phplovesong|4 months ago
aredox|4 months ago
[deleted]
zvmaz|4 months ago
[deleted]
pelagicAustral|4 months ago
matltc|4 months ago