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Comment by xenelor | Hacker News Reader

The hype around Omarchy is just insane..

It is not an installer script (anymore), so instead you have to download a 7GB ISO file (in the name of 'good UX') that ships with Zoom, Spotify, Hey, Basecamp, Steam, Minecraft (??), etc. but you still end up using the same package mirrors (arch's). If it was an install script, like LARBS or many others (before and after omarchy), I'd (almost) get it. If it was a derivative distro, like endeavour or manjaro, I'd (almost) get it. But this just makes no sense. I'm all for making Linux more accessible, but this ain't it, chief.

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The hype around Rails is just insane.

It's not just a few libs (anymore), so instead you have to download hundreds of gems (in the game of 'good dev ex') that ships with activsupport, and ORM, ERB and even pushes an app architecture on you but you still end up using ruby. If it was just a few things like sinatra and sequel I'd (almost) get it. If it was a fork of another project like Merb I'd (almost get it) but this just make no sense. I'm all for making web development more accessible but this aint it, chief.

Sure, you win, chief :)

Archlinux:

> Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant to be configured by the user during installation so they may add only what they require.

They should have been like DHH, opinonated, convention over configuration and ship with minecraft pre installed

This but unronically

I don't really mind 7GB ISO file. What gets my nerve is the default packaging of shit-load of unnecessary apps.

Into an Arch install, and Arch already has an install script. I know it doesn't spit out a usable ultra pretty system. I think it's a good thing the Arch system doesn't require a single whole-drive LUKS configuration, meaning you get to do the thing we talk about as a sort of benchmark in the devops world: setting up Arch with one or a few encrypted volumes. Strange to me to hear me criticizing linux spreading, yet...

They're one and the same? Without the 'default packaging of shit-load of unnecessary apps' you have a 1.4GB Arch image.

It’s not for me either. I peeked at the script and repo the other day. There were choices I wouldn’t make, but it’s written opinionated in the front. That’s totally fine by me.

It is definitely making Linux more accessible. Yet still new comers to Linux will struggle when they want to do sightly more than what Omarchy offers. In that sense, the current Omarchy may not be _accessible_. But I think with this amount of users coming in, they will be able to find ways for almost anything.

It’s been having a great side effect. Hyprland is having a lot of support. I hope that many other pieces will have supports for better Linux experience. Who knows most of major software applications will have official Linux support in a few years.

I wonder how many will or already have followed the Omarchy path without realizing the difficulty they'll have dual booting.

I think you are not in the target audience for it.

I am not in it either, I think arch has great defaults and archinstall is enough. On top of that it's incredibly well documented. But some people just want to hop in as quickly as possible and get to something working.

7 gigabytes? With a “G”? That must take 10s of seconds, minutes even. And for what, a ‘good experience’? Humans make no sense to me either.

People online will always find some angle to complain about things other people are enjoying.

"This is a 7GB ISO that includes the entire system for offline installation (just 1/10th the size of macOS!)."

This is literally from Omarchy's release notes. How is it a problem if I make a comparison but it's ok when DHH does it :) Anyhow, you do you.

I feel like quoting that classic hn comment reaction to the release of Dropbox. Why do we need this good experience? We already have ftp!

> I feel like quoting that classic hn comment reaction to the release of Dropbox.

You mean the one where the commenter was respectful and helpful and had a productive conversation, just like HN encourages?

Every time you mention that comment in a bad light, you worsen dang’s day.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27068148

Thank you, this is my pet peeve as well

Yeah I don't get it. Why can't you just install that stuff on Arch?

If Windows came with all that crap preinstalled we'd call it bloatware.

Very very weird finding choice. There must be hundreds of better strategic investments that could be made. Thousands even.

The Arch installer even prompts you to ask if you want to add various common stuff (and you can of course add anything else).

People distro hop all the time for out of the box experience. Very few enjoy configuring their desktop to perfection, because frankly it's a huge PITA with everything being split between a thousand control panels and config files with differing conventions and levels of documentation.

When a distro with a default configuration close to what some group of users is looking for shows up, that's exciting to that group because it's that much less fiddling they need to think about, and perhaps most importantly it's not going to randomly break on them one day because it's represented in the distribution's testing.

It's mostly a PITA on Linux because once you do things yourself they will eventually break and you're the one who will have to figure out how to solve it via your own custom setup again. Similar to Vim templates it saves a lot of time joining a community build.

Claude Code really helped me with this recently. I have a rather old dotfiles repository (10+ years) for my Arch system, and I can really feel the fatigue from updating and maintaining it. So much so that over the years, it has accumulated many minor annoyances that I never fixed. Nowadays, I can simply explain these issues to an LLM, and it will mostly resolve them.

The install script is still there, you don't have to use the ISO [0]. I prefer to do my own btrfs subvolumes, partitioning, tweaks, etc and just run the script after a base install. Uninstalling anything is a matter of seconds from the provided menus.

[0] https://learn.omacom.io/2/the-omarchy-manual/96/manual-insta...

I was curious, and i wasn't able to run an earlier version of the install script into a system i'd already set up; script complained about non-encrypted volumes. That was enough for me to walk away.

It is strange to me that omarchy took off and not Regolith Desktop [1], which is a very similar project, and has been around a lot longer. I suppose the DHH effect is real. There is definitely a critical mass accumulating around the hyprland ecosystem. They seem to be forming their own culture separate from the wider FOSS community that I find concerning.

[1] https://regolith-desktop.com/

Mind elaborating on that last bit? Both about their specific culture, and your concerns?

Oh man, I forgot about Regolith! I ran it for a few weeks on an old ThinkPad a few years ago when it had a new release and it was pretty nice compared to configuring i3 and all that myself.

I wanted to try Omarchy out on my endeavouros desktop, but got annoyed that there wasn't a simple install script. I don't really want to re-install my whole OS just to try a new DE config.

With Linux you can have a million rices with passionate creators who motivate their family, friends, audience to try something new. I would prefer spliting the money among more projects like this rather than misplacing resources into a hobbiest/poweruser thing. Ideas that would be more appropriate than money: an award, signal boost, pizza, invite to a convention

If I was conspiratorially minded I would say Omarchy exists and get support just so LARBS users have someone to spit at while feeling like the underdog. Props to the Omarchy creator for being so unabashedly opinionated in their rice despite the years of hate on soy devs. Unused RAM is wasted ram!

Omarchy iso is literally 2 minutes from boot from usb to a productive pc

Good for you.

It's YouTube-hype, there is a newfound love for TUIs and DHH, as a very influencial person fell for it as well. I don't think anybody really wants an OS with e.g. Rails pre installed, not even people using Rails. People use specific versions for specific apps. I think Omarchy will be soon forgotten.

As someone who has been running all the components of omarchy before they made it, I agree with you in spirit especially as an arch user.

But other people need an ISO and yes all those things are kinda considered standard at this point.

People like you and I aren't the target audience, but for the people who are, this is what they have been asking for.

I am pretty sure all the stuff is optional and the main point is having everything like drivers working right away instead of looking for solutions yourself

That's something most distros do already, or at least try to. Good default setup and working drivers Ubuntu aimed for a decade ago. So that would not be exciting.

Maybe it's more about the willingness to include software other distros see critically and would not include by default, like docker.

> at least try to

this. they try to be un-opinionated.

The difference is of taste.

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