An in-depth look at the currently trending Arch Linux configuration that is Omarchy.

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A critical technical review of Omarchy, a pre-configured Arch Linux distribution created by David Heinemeier Hansson. The analysis reveals significant security vulnerabilities including a non-functional firewall by default, weak password policies, and poorly written bash scripts lacking proper error handling. The review examines missing essential features like RAID support, swap configuration, and proper laptop power management, while highlighting the gap between marketing claims of being a production-ready system and the actual implementation quality.

A Word on Omarchy

Every GNU/Linux distribution is essentially a pre-configured opinionated one. Especially, if we are talking anything, that’s based on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and all other base distributions.
This is why I wish, people would stop making random generalist “distributions”, wasting their precious development time and instead join the base distributions’ projects, to really improve the actual base source everybody uses.

I don’t know why DHH gets so much flak, and I don’t know if this post is just being harsh for the sake of it, but it’s misrepresenting what Omarchy is, imho: a throwaway system, to taste (and test) new stuff.
From the tiling window manager, to the keyboard-centric approach, it lets users try something that may speed up their productivity, and some of these things are even included in Windows recently via PowerToys. Anything past that? You’re on your own, you better start reading and learning, he said as much himself.
Some concerns are legit, such as the firewall not auto starting issue, but some others seem too fragile, lie bashing some bugs (fixed btw) in Hyprland, without mentioning that it’s been brought up by a single developer.

Author seems knowledgable, maybe they could contribute to the project to patch up all these things rather than just posting. But I’m speaking out of line since I hadn’t bothered to look up if they have or not either.
For me, <a href="https://omarchy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://omarchy.org/</a> just worked out of the box setting it up on an old crap machine I had laying around. I’m a dev, and it had all the nice things I would want, it also comes with a lot of easy to find knowledge, which is new for me.
Regardless of the security issues as an end user always wanting to give linux a try to move away from windows world this was a breath of fresh air. (Yes i’ve tried pop os, ubuntu, some other random distros but none felt right for me; the fun factor of this is the hook).
So anyone knowledgeable enough to know about issues, please contribute that knowledge to the setup.
The author (DHH) had a few appearances in YouTube videos as of late, promoting and/or answering questions by the hosts. He mentioned the meaning of omarchy <a href="https://youtu.be/ljGPvgMPOn8?t=1121" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">YT video timestamp</a> “… omarchy… literally stands for ‘chef’s choice…’”
anyway cheers!

Very long post, even summary is too long.
TLDR: Omarchy is bad.
I personally not sure if author is not just ‘hating’ then adding valid comments.

Isn’t it just arch and omarchy being list of packages that installs on top of it? I mean if you have arch installed you can just run the script and get omarchy out of it from what i read so far.
I mean, imagine bashing on kubuntu because of KDE, this is what it feels like.
Or imagine this, you install arch, you install bunch of software and tweak it to your liking, you make a list of that software and make it into script that is run post install. Give it a name. People then proceed to bash on your personal selection.
Who cares, also, I think dude did it for himself and to share with people who might benefit from it, not as a golden grail. Dude likes building things, doesn’t have to be perfect - but that’s where the ACCUALLY meme developers come to fight the fight instead of building their own thing. If its broken, fix it and save it for yourself, or you can share it with others - but be prepared for some hate because you use bash instead of zsh or fish, i mean how dare you!
its one of those stupid things where people are arguing about but the arguments solve absolutely nothing.
Also I get why the guy gets the flak, I am just not spending my energy there because there are finer things in life than focusing on why someone has opinions that he/she has.