Ryan Hayden

October 26, 2025

Why I choose Cosmic over Omarchy

I was very big on the Omarchy Hype train pretty early, and ended up using it for awhile on basically every computer I have.  But I've switched from Omarchy to Cosmic/Pop OS 24 a few weeks ago and I actually think it is superior.

I love DHH.  I credit reading Getting Real and ReWork with sparking my  coding career.  I love 37 Signals.  I've read their blog, listened to their podcast, and used their software for ages.  So when they announced Omarchy, I was all in. 

And I LOVED it.  The tiling window manager setup was a revelation.  The theming was perfect.  The way the OS handled web apps was brilliant. 

But it wasn't perfect.  There were just enough headaches to remind me that I was using something new:
- I could never get printers to work.
- Switching between wireless networks was not intuitive.
- Plugging my laptop into various external monitor setups (presenting, clamshell mode, regular use) required editing a text file.
- Battery life wasn't great, and suspend never worked well on my computer.

What really got to me was when, during a team meeting, Hyperland crashed and my screen was permanently taken over with some anime girl - even after reboot.

My boss and coworkers had decided they wanted to push our junior developers onto Cosmic when the beta released, and so I took that as the time to commit and switch.

It turns out, cosmic has most of the stuff I loved about Omarchy, but with the stability of a long established Ubuntu distro and the hardware compatibility you'd expect from System76 (I use a system76 laptop at work). 

In a few minutes, I was able to setup almost the same workspace setup (with the same keybindings) as Omarchy.  With the Cosmic Tweaks app, I am able to theme everything with lots of built in themes like Omarchy.  So right out of the gate, you get the two best features of Omarchy.

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But then you get actual GUIs for network and settings.  Much better battery life and (for me at least) much more stability.
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So if you tried Omarchy and liked it, but it felt a little bit too cutting edge for you - I think you'll be really pleased with Cosmic and Pop OS 24.04.

I'm running it on my personal laptop, my personal desktop and my work laptop, and I am totally satisfied.