It's especially weird considering DHH is heavily disliked by much of the Linux community for his political beliefs, and association with him is heavily frowned upon.
Over at KDE, we've seen some criticism for taking sponsorship money from Framework laptops because they sent him a laptop once.
I must believe on some level these sponsors are jumping on the bandwagon to show off how in they are with desktop Linux, now that it's slowly arriving in the mainstream, while possibly rather demonstrating their obliviousness.
The really strange thing about the criticism directed towards Framework is they simply sponsored the Hyprland window manager, not the Omarchy OS, but because Omarchy uses Hyprland that got conflated as funding Omarchy.
They keep sending DHH hardware and at one point they were sponsoring his Rails conference too. People backed off on the Hyprland sponsorship but Framework doubled down on DHH.
The power of contacts, and looking at the initial list it seems it’s a bunch of founders whose startups succeed using Ruby on Rails, so I guess yeah… they owe some to DHH
Steamos is a mirrored snapshot of arch (like omarchy) + bash and python scripts (like omarchy) + their own shell (steam running on top of gamescope for steamos and a custom quickshell based one running on top of hyprland for omarchy) + modified upstream kernel (both steamos and omarchy)
At the time Ubuntu started, Debian's old installer (boot-floppies) was legendary for its unfriendliness, and the new all-singing, all-dancing replacement was a mammoth endeavour and a long way off completion. Ubuntu provided a simple, friendly installer that covered only the limited set of the most common use cases, but was a dramatic improvement for new users.
They also employed a bunch of Debian developers, and gave them space to continue their work for Debian. It wasn't all smooth sailing, but Debian was stronger as a result of their contributions right from the very start.
Now, maybe Omarchy are providing a similarly major contribution to Arch - but, if they are, they've kept quiet about it so far.
It raises the question: what is a distro since many distros are customizations of other distros. What makes Ubuntu a distro and not just a customization of Debian?
The video above is in inline with my opinion. If you ship an ISO (so users can install your distro directly without installing another distro first) and have control over the packages then you are a distro. Apparently, Omarchy has its own ISO and it's own mirror of the arch package repo so it is a distro by that definition.
Hyperland being funded for 3 years benefits all distros and users that rely on it. The same goes for Quickshell. And my guess is that this is only the beginning. They will support any project that Omarchy is built on. They even reached out to AUR maintainers to support them financially and build better, more stable infrastructure for any distro that depends on AUR, but they refused.
Red Hat: billions, Canonical/Ubuntu, SUSE: hundreds of millions, Debian: one million/year. It's not that unusual for a distro to get funding - just a different scale here due to their connections.
Their foundation is now sponsoring Hyprland, mise and quickshell development, probably other projects to come.
It appears to be an opinionated, batteries included distro/OS using a tiling window manager, and it's targeted at Mac/Windows power users. It's a niche target and time will tell whether it pays off.
There's a distinct difference between the contributions of Debian and that of Omarchy.
Debian is a foundational distro, it's a giant with huge populations standing on its shoulders. It shoulders a large ongoing burden, security guarantees, some of the largest maintained repos of any distro, a large amount of infrastructure.
Omarchy is a script and some dotfiles. Happy for them, of course, but it's odd. Omarchy just isn't doing that much.
Many distros don't bother with any of that. Calamares is a fine off-the-shelf installer. GRUB has fine defaults. Desktops have fine defaults. And many distros use those. Custom dotfiles and a way to apply them to a fresh system doesn't make a distro.
That's, truly, completely fine for a fledgling project, that's how many start before expanding beyond that... But why is Omarchy getting funding that's more in line with a distro that already has its own infrastructure?
>why is Omarchy getting funding that's more in line with a distro that already has its own infrastructure?
A few reasons spring to mind but I'll focus on the one I care about: It's damn good.
I've used Linux for over 20 years and it really stands out. Nothing has ever been as easy and fast to install and dropped me into a more polished, simple yet productive environment immediately.
I think the tiling VM will limit its appeal, and hope to see projects inspired by Omarchy put the same level of detail, pruning, curation and polish to Gnome and KDE-based distros.
> 'custom dotfiles and a way to apply them to a fresh system'
Latest Omarchy 4 is a full ISO installer, with a quickshell-based desktop - not scripts, their own system apps, taskbar, notifications, etc. I'm failing to see how it is less of a distro than most, and the fact it doesn't try to customize the kernel or filesystem is a plus for me. May be time to take another look at it.
You realize Omarchy just started a couple of months ago, right? The founder himself put his money and time where his mouth is.
Most of the thousands of distros are just a collection of config changes in GNOME, etc. There is no fundamental change in 99% of Linux distros. It's just different configurations of different tools, with the main differences being the package manager and window manager they use, plus their configs. Everything else is exactly the same.
That's a very simplistic and end-user-oriented view of what a distro is. Somebody hosts the infrastructure that Omarchy runs on. Somebody maintains the packages and applies specialized patches and communicates upstream. Omarchy doesn't do that. And that's fine.
Plenty of distros start out at that level. But those fledgling distros don't get these kinds of sponsorships. Why Omarchy?
Its for a foundation where the Linux distro is their flagship product. Much like Mozilla or the Wikipedia foundation. It looks like they're also funding artists[1] and downstream projects[2].
They just founded the Foundation, and the money has not been allocated yet. But Hyperland, Quickshell, and some others already got 3 year sponsorship deals.
The AUR maintainers refused the cooperation and the money. So they will start working on new package management for Omarchy.
My guess, though, is that most of the money will go to DHH's obsession with Macs and anti-Apple stance (porting Linux to work on M architecture), either by directly funding Asahi Linux or by forking it to speed up development.
1Password can't even include ARM builds of their app in their existing packages [1]. I am highly skeptical of anything DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) is the benevolent dictator of, and for good reason [2]. Perhaps that money would be spent better elsewhere in the ecosystem.
I can't quite put my finger on it but this rush to astroturf Omarchy just has bad vibes all around. DHH has been on a politician-level campaign to fund/promote what seems like a fun nerd project. Call me paranoid but it all just comes across as dubious.
...because everyone I do not agree with is a Nazi? Grow up, child, discover the world and notice it is full of people who think different thoughts from you.
I think that's the main reason why Omarchy gets talked about so much.
In large parts of the internet, open bigotry is thankfully still socially unacceptable. But when bigotry is wrapped up in a software project like this, it gives people posting/upvoting/sharing a level of plausible deniability.
hn crowd has always been favorable to trump because at the end of the day they want lower taxes, but i think a few other ideas have been smuggled along with that
(because you always have to explain the joke on this site, everyone was warned about these fascists before and during their rise to power, and this site supports them because the obvious reason https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-026-02862-9)
Yes is the only valid answer. The reason is that there's nothing remarkable about Omarchy for it to deserve a fraction of the hype it gets.
Even calling Omarchy a distro seems to be a stretch. The best description I're read is that it is a Hyprland setup for Arch. As far as what a Linux distro can be, this is pretty mediocre. The sort of thing that would get an HN thread, see minor traction, and take the backseat.
But, quite a lot of people seem interested in hyping it. I suspect the reason is just because the dude behind it is not shy about being an ethnonationalist, "great replacement theory" asshole, etc.
Quite a few people here are very fond of those talking points. Thinking about brown people being ethnically cleansed makes them all tingly inside. So, they really want to talk about Omarchy as a proxy.
This is the only thing I've read about DHH's controversial opinions, so take this with a huge grain of salt. Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow:
Those DHH quotes do not seem nearly as bad as I thought they were going to. In fact, they don't seem bad at all. One may vigorously disagree with them, I just mean that they are not clearly immoral. Of course, that's only if you take them at face value. There could be darker or more crack-pot opinions behind them, but that specter is hard to avoid with this topic.
The author's arguments are weak or tangential, and their conclusion seems overly dramatic. As a first impression, this puts me in the mindset of, "people are overreacting to DHH's opinions because it's related to immigration/race/culture." Again, maybe I'll change my mind, but as a first impression, that's what this article tells me.
Wanting to forcibly eject all brown people isn't enough to call someone radically racist? That's not a middle-of-the-road, agree-to-disagree kind of stance.
He explicitly says that nonwhite people feel alien and like they don't belong. He "heartwarming"ly embraces Tommy Robinson's white replacement marches advocating for forced "remigration" as a breath of fresh air against what he calls suicidal empathy. Must I show my work when adding 2 plus 2 or can we agree that the answer is 4?
>Must I show my work when adding 2 plus 2 or can we agree that the answer is 4?
This is arrogant in a damaging way. You should prefer to answer the asked question, since that would be an effective piece of information in this case (i.e. it's not a bait question, so it's not harmful to engage with).
The answers are present in the post we're discussing quite plainly without any reading between the lines necessary. I think the simplicity of the analogy is fitting. If not bait, there are few charitable explanations.
No, I am sympathetic to his critics if that's what he is saying. I just don't see that in the article. But on the other hand, since this is an example of cultural replacement where the new folks happen to be disproportionately brown, this may just be a case of those who are passionate about the idea of racial equality getting a little incensed, which is understandable (laudable, even), but cultural replacement/disruption is a real and valid source of misery/desperation.
Since you’re happytoexplain, please explain to me what cultural replacement/disruption looks like in western countries. I can see it happening in countries like China with the Uighurs, in Bangladesh with the Rohingya, but I can’t see any actual “culture” erasure happening in Britain or Australia or the United States. I see plenty of cultural enrichment, but no erasure.
No need to be sarcastic and mock my username or my culture. I'm not asserting that you're an asshole or something because you don't agree that there is cultural disruption and/or replacement in London or parts of the US. The entire concept is subjective and highly experiential, despite (or because of?) the drama and trauma intrinsic to it. I will say though that elevating the definition to essentially require genocide minimizes reality.
Your reading comprehension and political awareness needs a lot of work.
> cultural replacement/disruption is a real and valid source of misery/desperation
Not like this it isn’t. To the extent that there’s a valid complaint, it’s the fault of those who’ve been in power over the last few decades. To turn the blame on minorities is a classic rightist move, and it’s always cowardly, nasty, and wrong.
But this isn't happening. To cite someone with closer experience (who also does admit that the "migration issue in Britain is complicated and multi-layered") [0]:
> To all of that he adds a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself. A trope that exists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of convicted child sex offenders are white men, with Asian men in fact under-represented.
People who want to be racist will find or invent any evidence necessary to dig themselves in deeper. There is no basis or validity to it. If there were, there would be no need to be so coy and indirect about it.
So you think it's entirely moral to label only white British people as "native Brits"? To speak warmly of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's ("Tommy Robinson") marches? Unless you are also comfortably on the far right, I'm at a loss.
> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
Dehumanization of an entire ethnic group by comparing them to animals. Use of violent rhetoric to forcibly ethnically cleanse a region.
There's a word for people who employ this rhetoric. Can you guess?
Since then, he also called for a pogrom against Romani people, in language that explicitly mirrored that which the Nazis used when calling for ethnic cleansing against the same group of people.
Why is this succeeding while other OSS funding initiatives have failed? These companies were just waiting to be sure their money would go to a confirmed Nazi?
It's vice-signaling. They want to make sure that the industry knows that calling for a pogrom against the Romani people is the kind of malevolence that will be rewarded.
mdrzn | 14 hours ago
fwip | 14 hours ago
sho_hn | 14 hours ago
Over at KDE, we've seen some criticism for taking sponsorship money from Framework laptops because they sent him a laptop once.
I must believe on some level these sponsors are jumping on the bandwagon to show off how in they are with desktop Linux, now that it's slowly arriving in the mainstream, while possibly rather demonstrating their obliviousness.
cpburns2009 | 14 hours ago
wrl | 11 hours ago
edu | 14 hours ago
StrLght | 14 hours ago
It's more like a set of dotfiles, but yeah.
edu | 14 hours ago
Hope they redirect some of their fundings to them!
theshrike79 | 14 hours ago
jdiff | 14 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 12 hours ago
gclawes | 14 hours ago
roryirvine | 12 hours ago
At the time Ubuntu started, Debian's old installer (boot-floppies) was legendary for its unfriendliness, and the new all-singing, all-dancing replacement was a mammoth endeavour and a long way off completion. Ubuntu provided a simple, friendly installer that covered only the limited set of the most common use cases, but was a dramatic improvement for new users.
They also employed a bunch of Debian developers, and gave them space to continue their work for Debian. It wasn't all smooth sailing, but Debian was stronger as a result of their contributions right from the very start.
Now, maybe Omarchy are providing a similarly major contribution to Arch - but, if they are, they've kept quiet about it so far.
nerdix | 14 hours ago
https://youtu.be/yIA4idIdY_k
The video above is in inline with my opinion. If you ship an ISO (so users can install your distro directly without installing another distro first) and have control over the packages then you are a distro. Apparently, Omarchy has its own ISO and it's own mirror of the arch package repo so it is a distro by that definition.
djfergus | 26 minutes ago
They are fully funding the author of Hyprland for 3 years.
DDH offered to work with Arch and they refused.
fourseventy | 14 hours ago
sdcfgy | 14 hours ago
Avshalom | 14 hours ago
bbg2401 | 14 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 11 hours ago
https://git.outfoxxed.me/quickshell/quickshell (GNU LGPL 3)
https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland (BSD)
https://github.com/jdx/mise (MIT)
are not really foss
StrLght | 14 hours ago
mirzap | 14 hours ago
StrLght | 13 hours ago
I am inclined to believe everyone sane will distance themselves from it. Just like GNOME did.
ricardobeat | 14 hours ago
Their foundation is now sponsoring Hyprland, mise and quickshell development, probably other projects to come.
Zambyte | 14 hours ago
cpburns2009 | 14 hours ago
Zambyte | 13 hours ago
cpburns2009 | 6 hours ago
jdiff | 14 hours ago
Debian is a foundational distro, it's a giant with huge populations standing on its shoulders. It shoulders a large ongoing burden, security guarantees, some of the largest maintained repos of any distro, a large amount of infrastructure.
Omarchy is a script and some dotfiles. Happy for them, of course, but it's odd. Omarchy just isn't doing that much.
ricardobeat | 14 hours ago
I think the "set of dotfiles" was called Omakub. Omarchy is a distro like any other - custom installer, bootloader, desktop and WM setup, etc.
jdiff | 13 hours ago
That's, truly, completely fine for a fledgling project, that's how many start before expanding beyond that... But why is Omarchy getting funding that's more in line with a distro that already has its own infrastructure?
Kon5ole | 8 hours ago
A few reasons spring to mind but I'll focus on the one I care about: It's damn good.
I've used Linux for over 20 years and it really stands out. Nothing has ever been as easy and fast to install and dropped me into a more polished, simple yet productive environment immediately.
I think the tiling VM will limit its appeal, and hope to see projects inspired by Omarchy put the same level of detail, pruning, curation and polish to Gnome and KDE-based distros.
ricardobeat | 7 hours ago
Latest Omarchy 4 is a full ISO installer, with a quickshell-based desktop - not scripts, their own system apps, taskbar, notifications, etc. I'm failing to see how it is less of a distro than most, and the fact it doesn't try to customize the kernel or filesystem is a plus for me. May be time to take another look at it.
mirzap | 14 hours ago
Most of the thousands of distros are just a collection of config changes in GNOME, etc. There is no fundamental change in 99% of Linux distros. It's just different configurations of different tools, with the main differences being the package manager and window manager they use, plus their configs. Everything else is exactly the same.
jdiff | 13 hours ago
Plenty of distros start out at that level. But those fledgling distros don't get these kinds of sponsorships. Why Omarchy?
mirzap | 13 hours ago
fwip | 13 hours ago
Lalabadie | 14 hours ago
weberer | 14 hours ago
[1] https://omarchy.org/air/
[2] https://omarchy.org/sponsorships/
ok123456 | 14 hours ago
cpburns2009 | 14 hours ago
kelvinjps10 | 14 hours ago
cpburns2009 | 14 hours ago
reddalo | 14 hours ago
mirzap | 14 hours ago
The AUR maintainers refused the cooperation and the money. So they will start working on new package management for Omarchy.
My guess, though, is that most of the money will go to DHH's obsession with Macs and anti-Apple stance (porting Linux to work on M architecture), either by directly funding Asahi Linux or by forking it to speed up development.
sho_hn | 14 hours ago
mirzap | 13 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 9 hours ago
jonkoops | 14 hours ago
1. https://support.1password.com/install-linux/#arm-or-other-di... 2. https://thelibre.news/lets-talk-about-dhh/
cedws | 14 hours ago
FelineStateMach | 14 hours ago
Beyond my moral objections and public security concerns, I saw more forethought from ClearLinux by Intel around the same maturity point.
Hype doesn't make an OS appealing to me.
Hamuko | 14 hours ago
rglover | 14 hours ago
athorax | 14 hours ago
mertbio | 14 hours ago
Hamuko | 14 hours ago
copperx | 14 hours ago
Gualdrapo | 12 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 12 hours ago
hagbard_c | 11 hours ago
jdiff | 11 hours ago
surgical_fire | 9 hours ago
sho_hn | 14 hours ago
sunaurus | 14 hours ago
In large parts of the internet, open bigotry is thankfully still socially unacceptable. But when bigotry is wrapped up in a software project like this, it gives people posting/upvoting/sharing a level of plausible deniability.
lampeli | 14 hours ago
itsanaccount | 12 hours ago
https://www.fastcompany.com/91217605/new-york-times-editoria...
(because you always have to explain the joke on this site, everyone was warned about these fascists before and during their rise to power, and this site supports them because the obvious reason https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-026-02862-9)
chomp | 14 hours ago
jauntywundrkind | 13 hours ago
MuteXR | 10 hours ago
And companies clearly want that as well.
surgical_fire | 9 hours ago
Even calling Omarchy a distro seems to be a stretch. The best description I're read is that it is a Hyprland setup for Arch. As far as what a Linux distro can be, this is pretty mediocre. The sort of thing that would get an HN thread, see minor traction, and take the backseat.
But, quite a lot of people seem interested in hyping it. I suspect the reason is just because the dude behind it is not shy about being an ethnonationalist, "great replacement theory" asshole, etc.
Quite a few people here are very fond of those talking points. Thinking about brown people being ethnically cleansed makes them all tingly inside. So, they really want to talk about Omarchy as a proxy.
radku | 14 hours ago
Edit: I was curious and it was a genuine question, not sure why all the down-votes.
dwb | 13 hours ago
https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thoug...
happytoexplain | 13 hours ago
Those DHH quotes do not seem nearly as bad as I thought they were going to. In fact, they don't seem bad at all. One may vigorously disagree with them, I just mean that they are not clearly immoral. Of course, that's only if you take them at face value. There could be darker or more crack-pot opinions behind them, but that specter is hard to avoid with this topic.
The author's arguments are weak or tangential, and their conclusion seems overly dramatic. As a first impression, this puts me in the mindset of, "people are overreacting to DHH's opinions because it's related to immigration/race/culture." Again, maybe I'll change my mind, but as a first impression, that's what this article tells me.
jdiff | 12 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 9 hours ago
jdiff | 9 hours ago
happytoexplain | 3 hours ago
This is arrogant in a damaging way. You should prefer to answer the asked question, since that would be an effective piece of information in this case (i.e. it's not a bait question, so it's not harmful to engage with).
jdiff | an hour ago
happytoexplain | 9 hours ago
phs318u | 7 hours ago
soraminazuki | 4 hours ago
happytoexplain | 3 hours ago
dwb | 7 hours ago
> cultural replacement/disruption is a real and valid source of misery/desperation
Not like this it isn’t. To the extent that there’s a valid complaint, it’s the fault of those who’ve been in power over the last few decades. To turn the blame on minorities is a classic rightist move, and it’s always cowardly, nasty, and wrong.
jdiff | 5 hours ago
> To all of that he adds a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself. A trope that exists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of convicted child sex offenders are white men, with Asian men in fact under-represented.
People who want to be racist will find or invent any evidence necessary to dig themselves in deeper. There is no basis or validity to it. If there were, there would be no need to be so coy and indirect about it.
[0] https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...
dwb | 12 hours ago
dopple | an hour ago
> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
Dehumanization of an entire ethnic group by comparing them to animals. Use of violent rhetoric to forcibly ethnically cleanse a region.
There's a word for people who employ this rhetoric. Can you guess?
[1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/wolves-sheep-and-gypsies-ba44af6a
anildash | 9 hours ago
dwb | 7 hours ago
throwaway763864 | 10 hours ago
anildash | 9 hours ago
MuteXR | 10 hours ago
er0k | 5 hours ago
This actually sounds like the literal definition of quid pro quo.