r/omarchy

I’ve used Omarchy pretty regularly since 4.0 came out in August, though I also dabbled with it last year when the first version was released, and overall I’ve had a pretty good experience with it.

At the same time, I still see a lot of criticism whenever Omarchy comes up, whether it is in other channels on Reddit or on Twitter. Some of it seems less about the distro itself and more about DHH and his political opinions, the heavy emphasis on AI/vibe coding, or concerns about the people and organizations funding the Omarchy Foundation.

I understand those arguments, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of them.

What I’m more interested in are the technical criticisms, particularly people calling Omarchy bloated or insecure.

When people say Omarchy is bloated, what exactly do they mean?

It doesn’t seem to me like much software is installed by default, and it’s not exactly hard to remove what you don’t want. Personally, I usually end up removing maybe Docker, Lazydocker, Fastfetch, fcitx, and some of the web apps. I also recently found out that you can remove a lot of the web apps from the terminal in far fewer steps; unfortunately, you still have to do them one by one, but it is more convenient than using the menu.

Is the criticism simply about the amount or type of software installed by default? Is it more about not having much choice during installation, unlike something like CachyOS, which I’ve recently been experimenting with using Niri? Or is there something deeper going on?

I ask because whenever I install something like Fedora, I usually end up removing a bunch of software anyway. Depending on the installation, that might be Transmission, Pidgin, HexChat, various GNOME applications or games, and other packages I know I’m never going to use.

So having opinionated software choices in Omarchy doesn’t really strike me as fundamentally different. I just remove or replace what I don’t want.

The security criticism is the part I’m even more curious about.

I know legitimate concerns have been raised in the past. For example, there was the issue surrounding Kitty’s remote-control functionality, and Omarchy adds the user to the docker group.

My understanding of the Docker issue is that adding a user to the docker group lets you run Docker commands without sudo, but membership in that group effectively gives the user root-equivalent privileges because Docker can mount the host filesystem, start privileged containers, etc.

That’s obviously something worth understanding, but it’s also a fairly common Docker configuration rather than something completely unique to Omarchy.

So what, specifically, is Omarchy doing that makes the claim that it’s less secure than a normal Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. installation?

Are there currently insecure defaults, exposed services, questionable permissions, unnecessary daemons, bad firewall/network settings, supply-chain concerns, or something else?

I’m genuinely interested in the technical criticism here. I’d especially like to hear concrete examples rather than just "Omarchy is insecure" or "Omarchy is bloated," because I see those claims fairly often without much explanation of what specifically is wrong.

I’m also curious whether some of the technical criticism is legitimate but gets mixed together with people simply disliking DHH, the project’s direction, or the culture around it.

I’m somewhat of a distro hopper. I get bored and I install a new distro. Lately though I’d try CachyOS with Hyprland and would get frustrated. But being able to tell AI to do something and it actually works has me keep coming back to Omarchy. Don’t know why it gets so much stink. Anywho that was my two cents.

Hello,
quick question. Since I upgraded to Quattro Super+C, Super+V stopped working. Super+C occasionally ends reacts like CTRL+C in the terminal. Additionally sometimes stuff simply isn't loaded into the clipboard. Is this a common problem? Any easy fix?

I love the idea of a phone that I Can customize the way I want via AI. Is there something similar out there already?

Just a fun video celebrating our favorite distro, procedurally generated with claude code

I am in the process of making Omarchy my main non work machine. I have a nearly new Snapdragon based 16gb Ideapad 5, an old Thinkpad 13 i3 16gb with a fading battery, but usb-c charge port, which has twice frozen solid requiring a battery disconnect and a very old and heavy 8gb Thinkpad T series again with a fading battery.

I was going to soldier on with the two old Thinkpads but am warming more and more to Omarchy and want to keep a light laptop running it in my bag. Windows is never going to play completely safely with Omachy on the Snapdragon as a dual boot even when Omarchy Dragon is stable.

I don't want to try and convice my partner that spending a large amount of money on yet another laptop is a good idea. I want to keep a Window machine around. My current thoughts are to get a new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Gen 10 for around £330. This has an empty SSD slot that I can install Omarchy on (after temporarily removing the win drive). Apparently the BIOS can make the omarchy drive the first to boot but can not hide the Win SSD. When MS is updating Windows it can be made to play nice with the other SSD. Also some SKUs (83KD000TUK) have a spare RAM slot so I can add another 16gb to the 8gb in due course. Its Intel Core 3 100U is a different generation and seems to outperform almost any old Thinkpad available for a similar price. Leaving aside any ruggedness and repairability issues is there a flaw in this plan? Anybody running Omachy on this laptop?

Does Snapdragon play well with omarchy and arch?

I want to buy a zenbook with Snapdragon x plus processor, I'm not dead set on using arch distros and omarchy on but I want to see if it's compatible or are there developers working on the compatibility.