Why I traded my custom "Opinionated Linux" for Omarchy

I've been using Omarchy as my main setup since June 26, 2025, the day DHH released the first version. Before that I had my own custom Opinionated Linux, mclovin-ARCHived: an Arch + i3wm installer set up exactly the way I liked. It was total control over the OS: me deciding what goes in, keeping every piece (i3wm, polybar, picom, kitty, dotfiles) up to date and making sure they all talked to each other for the whole OS to keep working. It did the job, but it was costly to keep up to date: always digging into some new TUI to solve a small issue, and changing CPU or laptop meant checking compatibility for everything and tweaking for each machine.

Omarchy solved that by delivering the same kind of setup, but with a whole community behind it, working and discussing improvements every week. I learn something new all the time.

Theme: Osaka Jade

Why Omarchy

Omarchy is an opinionated Arch distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), creator of Rails, Basecamp and Hey. Under the hood it's Arch Linux + Hyprland, but it ships with everything pre-configured: lock screen, menu bar, bluetooth, themes, keybindings. No installing packages one by one.

What sold me on it: bare Hyprland is beautiful but raw. On its own, it leaves you configuring basics for weeks. Omarchy picks good defaults and hands you a system that's ready to work a few minutes after boot.

It's the sister project to Omakub, the Ubuntu version of the same idea. People who want Linux with a softer learning curve go for Omakub; people who want Arch without losing two days configuring it go for Omarchy.

Themes

One of Omarchy's strong points is the theme community. omarchythemes.com collects dozens of themes ready to install with a single command, and the whole palette switches together: terminal, editor, status bar, lock screen, wallpaper. And the switch is instant. A keybind, two seconds, the whole system already on the new look. Impressive every time. The hero shot up top is the Osaka Jade theme. Below, a day-to-day setup with the Rose of Dune.

Theme: Rose of Dune

Where I came from

Came back to Linux from a MacBook M1 with 16GB of RAM. A few things piled up: Docker would eat through memory and RAM on a Mac is soldered, you can't upgrade, you have to buy a new one (and speccing one with more memory gets bureaucratic and expensive); for a tiling window manager I had to disable part of the system's security (SIP) to force Yabai (tiling WM for Mac), and any macOS update would break something; and I wanted to know what was actually running on the machine, since Mac, Windows and even Ubuntu come packed with stuff you never asked for, shipping telemetry without much transparency. Even Chrome on macOS installs a silent daemon called Keystone in the background (worth reading chromeisbad.com). Switching to Arch was the natural move.

I built mclovin-ARCHived to automate the install of my Arch + i3wm + polybar + neovim + dotfiles setup. The name was a reference to McLovin from the movie Superbad, it was basically my own "superbad script".

The initial reference was Omakub by DHH, which showed me the "run a script and have everything ready" pattern. I didn't go for Omakub directly because I'd used Ubuntu a lot years ago and wasn't into the GNOME style, I wanted something more customizable and tiling. But the idea stuck.

Other inspirations:

ML4W, another Arch automation project I came close to adopting
typecraft_dev on YouTube, with tutorials on Hyprland, i3wm, Neovim and Arch
caffeine.wiki/x220, where Rodrigo Franco (caffo) tuned Arch + dwm on a Thinkpad X220 for a cheap, durable and low-profile machine he could use anywhere (sketchy coffee shops included)

The installer did the job. But it was solo work to maintain.

Why I switched

Having your own installer is fun until the day you need to make the display manager work with a new webcam. Or you find out the AUR helper you picked three years ago is now abandonware. Or the polybar theme breaks because the font got renamed in some update.

All solvable. But solvable by one person doesn't scale well.

Since I work with Ruby on Rails, I've been following DHH's work for years. Rails is what he calls omakase (Japanese for "I'll leave it to you"): you take the good defaults that came in the box, instead of configuring every piece. Omakub took the same idea to Ubuntu, and in June 2025 came Omarchy, omakase for Arch + Hyprland. Natural continuation. I jumped in on day 1.

Following every release from the start is part of the appeal. The system gets more polished with each version, and the up-close view of the evolution makes up for any rough patches along the way.

When it makes sense for you

Before the practical checklist: Omarchy makes sense if you're curious about how Linux actually works under the hood. You'll follow the project, update, eventually break the OS and have to format to fix it. Not a path for everyone. But that's how you end up with real knowledge of how the system works, instead of just using it from a distance.

Omarchy is great if you:

Want Arch + tiling WM but don't want to spend days configuring
Are into the omakase approach: opinionated defaults, convention over configuration
Are willing to learn Hyprland (it has its quirks)

About hardware: it runs well even on older machines. Several old Intel Macs that had been sitting in drawers are back in action running Omarchy. Some hardware takes more work to configure, but the community on the project's Discord and GitHub has usually been there before and helps you sort it out.

Not for you if you want to configure every bit of the system by hand (in which case bare Arch is the path), or if you prefer KDE/GNOME (Omarchy is Hyprland-only by design).

Wrapping up

Keeping my own Linux installer was a good phase, taught me a lot. But landing on Omarchy means I get to use the same philosophy without being the only one responsible for maintaining it.

I can wipe the machine and have everything configured again in a few minutes. Macs don't work that way, Windows even less.

And nothing's set in stone. I still want to build an "Opinionated Script" for macOS with keybindings and a tiling window manager similar to Omarchy, since I need macOS to use Xcode and ship apps to iOS. Makes sense to have the machine set up in the same vibe without having to live inside it. With AI these days, putting a script like that together is straightforward.

If you want productive Arch in your day to day without being the solo maintainer, Omarchy is the way.

Sources:

Originally posted at guilherme44.com.

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