Here's my deeply considered review after my first week on Omarchy: Hot damn!
You may have heard of the new Linux distro cooked up by DHH that’s overflowing with enthusiasm and interest. There are hundreds of reviews and YouTube walkthroughs that go into great detail about what makes this OS so appealing. The one thing I can add is this: it’s not just for developers.
Omarchy is the Linux I’ve always wanted. I spent a year as a sys admin once — we had an actual server room, a couple of racks, and oodles of ethernet cables. One of my big projects was getting Oracle DB running on Red Hat Linux, something that was not officially supported at the time. That kicked off a love for the command line, kernel patches, open source, and the joy of configuring things to work just for you.
The next step, of course, was, why not run this on my laptop? Like most, I eventually laughed at the Year of Linux on the Desktop predictions, but I was one of those debating whether KDE or GNOME was the way forward. I bought books on VIM and Linux server administration. For awhile, I thought I would go down the technical path.
But then the door opened to what we eventually called product management and later, product strategy. The Mac switched to a Unix-based OS and I settled happily into a Mac life, dipping into development and the command line now and then.
It’s not every day that your company brings an operating system into the world, so I wanted to give it a go. I started with a Beelink desktop. Within a week, I knew it wasn’t a great fit for me. To fully explore Omarchy and develop a new habit, I needed to be able to experiment on nights and weekends, too, and not be tethered to my desk.
I returned it and ordered the 14” Dell XPS, which I tried out for the first time at Omacon. By the time it arrived, Omarchy 4 was out and I was off and running.
The Dell is a terrific laptop, very similar in quality to a MacBook Pro. I’m connecting it to my Studio Display and that’s the part that has been a dream. Plugging the exact same cable I use with my MacBook into the Dell produces the exact same result: power, video, and audio. I have an Ethernet adapater plugged into the display and I was floored that the Dell and Omarchy uses that connection without any configuration. “It just works” isn’t what you normally associate with Linux. It’s a new day!
I made the switch to a Lofree Flow keyboard about a year ago. I paired that with the Dell along with my Magic Mouse and I was set.
Omarchy is a joy to use. Every part of the experience has been considered. The UI and keyboard shortcuts are consistent and logical, and there’s plenty to guide you from the start. There’s an abundance of themes and they apply to everything instantly.
Instant is at the core of Omarchy. The experience is incredibly fast and smooth, especially on recent hardware. It utilizes Hyprland, so every app is a single window and your screen adjust dynamically as you open and close things. Switch between workspaces with one key combo, move an app to a different one with another.
Localsend makes it easy to send files or copy and paste between devices, including your phone. Most apps you could ever want are installed in a single step.
That includes your AI of choice, and agents are what transforms the experience for me. If you get stumped or hit a dead end, if you want help connecting a device or tuning your setup, the answers and fixes are immediate. What would’ve been hurdles to overcome are just steps along the way now.
I play all of my music with the Albums app, which uses Apple Music. I’ve always Airplayed from my phone to my MacBook, which pushes the audio to the Studio Displays speakers. On day two, I thought, “That wouldn't work with the Dell, would it?”
Fifteen minutes later, Claude had Airplay working perfectly. What a world!
You don’t have to be a developer, and you don’t have to sell your iPhone. If you’re curious, and miss the freedom and fun that come with making your computer work just the way you want, give Omarchy a go. You can even try it virtually on your Mac first.
And really, we all build software now. Why not build it using an operating system that's made expressly for that?
You may have heard of the new Linux distro cooked up by DHH that’s overflowing with enthusiasm and interest. There are hundreds of reviews and YouTube walkthroughs that go into great detail about what makes this OS so appealing. The one thing I can add is this: it’s not just for developers.
Omarchy is the Linux I’ve always wanted. I spent a year as a sys admin once — we had an actual server room, a couple of racks, and oodles of ethernet cables. One of my big projects was getting Oracle DB running on Red Hat Linux, something that was not officially supported at the time. That kicked off a love for the command line, kernel patches, open source, and the joy of configuring things to work just for you.
The next step, of course, was, why not run this on my laptop? Like most, I eventually laughed at the Year of Linux on the Desktop predictions, but I was one of those debating whether KDE or GNOME was the way forward. I bought books on VIM and Linux server administration. For awhile, I thought I would go down the technical path.
But then the door opened to what we eventually called product management and later, product strategy. The Mac switched to a Unix-based OS and I settled happily into a Mac life, dipping into development and the command line now and then.
It’s not every day that your company brings an operating system into the world, so I wanted to give it a go. I started with a Beelink desktop. Within a week, I knew it wasn’t a great fit for me. To fully explore Omarchy and develop a new habit, I needed to be able to experiment on nights and weekends, too, and not be tethered to my desk.
I returned it and ordered the 14” Dell XPS, which I tried out for the first time at Omacon. By the time it arrived, Omarchy 4 was out and I was off and running.
The Dell is a terrific laptop, very similar in quality to a MacBook Pro. I’m connecting it to my Studio Display and that’s the part that has been a dream. Plugging the exact same cable I use with my MacBook into the Dell produces the exact same result: power, video, and audio. I have an Ethernet adapater plugged into the display and I was floored that the Dell and Omarchy uses that connection without any configuration. “It just works” isn’t what you normally associate with Linux. It’s a new day!
I made the switch to a Lofree Flow keyboard about a year ago. I paired that with the Dell along with my Magic Mouse and I was set.
Omarchy is a joy to use. Every part of the experience has been considered. The UI and keyboard shortcuts are consistent and logical, and there’s plenty to guide you from the start. There’s an abundance of themes and they apply to everything instantly.
Instant is at the core of Omarchy. The experience is incredibly fast and smooth, especially on recent hardware. It utilizes Hyprland, so every app is a single window and your screen adjust dynamically as you open and close things. Switch between workspaces with one key combo, move an app to a different one with another.
Localsend makes it easy to send files or copy and paste between devices, including your phone. Most apps you could ever want are installed in a single step.
That includes your AI of choice, and agents are what transforms the experience for me. If you get stumped or hit a dead end, if you want help connecting a device or tuning your setup, the answers and fixes are immediate. What would’ve been hurdles to overcome are just steps along the way now.
I play all of my music with the Albums app, which uses Apple Music. I’ve always Airplayed from my phone to my MacBook, which pushes the audio to the Studio Displays speakers. On day two, I thought, “That wouldn't work with the Dell, would it?”
Fifteen minutes later, Claude had Airplay working perfectly. What a world!
You don’t have to be a developer, and you don’t have to sell your iPhone. If you’re curious, and miss the freedom and fun that come with making your computer work just the way you want, give Omarchy a go. You can even try it virtually on your Mac first.
And really, we all build software now. Why not build it using an operating system that's made expressly for that?