Omarchy: 1Password and 37signals become Distinguished Corporate Patrons

41 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by tosh
(omarchy.org)

85 Comments

cedws

3 hours ago

Obama giving himself medal dot jpeg

312ag16

3 hours ago

There is this movie "Mickey Blue Eyes" where Hugh Grant play an auctioneer whose girlfriend is the daughter of a mafia member.

The boss of the mafia org then forces the auctioneer to offer worthless paintings and forces various people to bid high. The paintings are just required so that something exchanges hands.

This is much of the software industry in a nutshell, except that no coercion is required. Just something needs to exchange hands.

ajmurmann

3 hours ago

The mafia needs money to change hands to launder it. What money is being laundered in software? Do you think anyone in the ecosystem is sitting on piles of dirty money?

w23a8

2 hours ago

Life is easier if you don't take any analogy, especially humorous ones, 100% literally.

I'm sure you can come up with scenarios where A wants clean money to go to B but still prefers a pretext.

In this case the now 12M (Brian Armstrong now also "donated") could be for AI and right-wing promotion for example.

rglover

3 hours ago

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.

athorax

3 hours ago

At a minimum its DHH trying to launder his reputation

kelvinjps10

3 hours ago

How much money is going upstream? Like hyprland and arch? Omarchy is basically just a script all the work is being done by otherpeople.

mirzap

3 hours ago

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.

sho_hn

3 hours ago

I highly doubt the current crop of Asahi people would take money from DHH.

mirzap

3 hours ago

Yup, that's why I think they will fork it.

reddalo

3 hours ago

...by other people and by AI, so by other people indirectly.

cpburns2009

3 hours ago

That describes most distributions, even the base ones like Debian and Fedora.

mdrzn

3 hours ago

$12.6 millions for a Linux distro?

edu

3 hours ago

Not even a distro, it’s a customization of Arch and Hyoerland.

Hope they redirect some of their fundings to them!

nerdix

3 hours ago

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?

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.

theshrike79

3 hours ago

So like SteamOS?

jdiff

3 hours ago

SteamOS runs its own infrastructure and is more than a static set of scripts and dotfiles on top of an existing distro.

TiredOfLife

an hour ago

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)

gclawes

3 hours ago

Yeah and Ubuntu just started as customized Debian

roryirvine

an hour ago

That's... not true.

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.

StrLght

3 hours ago

> distro

It's more like a set of dotfiles, but yeah.

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

fourseventy

3 hours ago

Why are people complaining about money going into FOSS?

StrLght

3 hours ago

I believe it's more about money ending up in an overhyped vibecoded Bash mess maintained by a very controversial figure. And that's putting it mildly.

mirzap

3 hours ago

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.

StrLght

3 hours ago

One controversial project supporting another controversial project. Wonder how and why that happened.

I am inclined to believe everyone sane will distance themselves from it. Just like GNOME did.

hagbard_c

an hour ago

Controversial because of... what? Personal politics? Project choices? If the former, grow up and accept that the time of slavishly following the narrative is coming to an end, that free speech means people are free to voice their own thoughts and that you not agreeing is interesting only to you. If the latter, yes, I understand that his rather fanboyish approach to generative models is controversial and only time will tell whether he is right to be so upbeat. Listening to the 5+ hour interview he did with Lex Friedman makes it clear he thinks the die is cast and generative models are the way to go for now.

jakelazaroff

36 minutes ago

> If the former, grow up and accept that the time of slavishly following the narrative is coming to an end, that free speech means people are free to voice their own thoughts and that you not agreeing is interesting only to you.

Consider taking your own advice here? Free speech means people are also free to object when other people with whom they disagree politically receive corporate funding. And likewise, you not agreeing with them is only interesting to you.

sdcfgy

3 hours ago

It’s who the money is going to in FOSS.

ok123456

3 hours ago

What exactly is the Mozilla Foundation developing these days? What is their budget?

cpburns2009

3 hours ago

You'd think a foundation raking in half a billion per year could accomplish more.

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

fwip

3 hours ago

The random selection of people chipping in for this is so weird. Do they owe DHH a favor or something?

sho_hn

3 hours ago

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.

cpburns2009

3 hours ago

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.

wrl

5 minutes ago

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.

edu

3 hours ago

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

Lalabadie

3 hours ago

but, but, the people who get a residency receive 2.5k per month!

ricardobeat

3 hours ago

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.

jdiff

3 hours ago

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.

ricardobeat

3 hours ago

I was not comparing them.

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

3 hours ago

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?

mirzap

3 hours ago

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.

jdiff

3 hours ago

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?

mirzap

3 hours ago

Ubuntu wouldn't be Ubuntu we know today if Mark hadn't put his own money into it ($10m initially, oh, the irony); the same goes for Omarchy.

fwip

2 hours ago

DHH has certainly put a lot of tokens in. It's not clear that he's put much thought into it.

Zambyte

3 hours ago

What services does Omarchy provide?

cpburns2009

3 hours ago

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.

Zambyte

2 hours ago

I'm asking about professional services. The thing people pay all those companies they listed for.

FelineStateMach

3 hours ago

I wish DHH even had pretended a solidified use of the funds.

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

3 hours ago

I don't really understand how a "Linux but for vibecoding" would even be that generally appealing.

mertbio

3 hours ago

I don’t know why we see Omarchy almost every day on the front page. Do people really want to use a distro from a white supremacist?

chomp

3 hours ago

I raised my eyebrows at this statement, but I had forgotten that blog post where he griped about the UK becoming less white.

jauntywundrkind

3 hours ago

Or I'm sorry Dave where he talks about being mad the LLM won't translate murderous genocidal screeds to Italian for him.

sho_hn

3 hours ago

HN is generally attracted to "success", not integrity.

sunaurus

3 hours ago

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.

Hamuko

3 hours ago

Twitter's still pretty popular.

copperx

3 hours ago

Linux embraces diversity. A vibecoded Nazi distro is just another Linux flavor. There's some irony in all this.

Gualdrapo

2 hours ago

Yet here they don't spend that much time talking about the other gazillion distros out there this days...

TiredOfLife

an hour ago

Which part of omarchy the distro is nazi?

hagbard_c

an hour ago

...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.

jdiff

28 minutes ago

Because people who want to forcibly eject, imprison, and torture brown people are Nazis. Evil exists. We can call it by name.

lampeli

3 hours ago

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

optimisticedits

3 hours ago

Do people really think DHH is a white supremacist? I'd love to see a shred of supporting evidence that amounts to more than a disagreement about rapid immigration, integration, and cultural identity.

Didn't John Cleese already explain the difference between a culturalist and a racist?

user

2 hours ago

[deleted]

pebble

3 hours ago

“Culturalism” is just Cleese’s attempt to package racism behind a pretty name. John Cleese is a racist.

happytoexplain

2 hours ago

It seems like a useful distinction (that, yes, is very easy to hide behind if your real opinion is just "I hate people based on skin color", but I have no way of knowing what's in Cleese's heart).

hagbard_c

42 minutes ago

Clear may be a racist or he may not be. His speaking out against cultural practices has no bearing on whether he is or isn't and neither you nor I are any the wiser on whether Cleese is a racist or not and it isn't even relevant in the context of his stance on cultural differences and preferences.

terracatta

3 hours ago

[flagged]

cpburns2009

3 hours ago

Don't succumb to the hate you'll undoubtedly receive for this. Continue to make good products and solve problems.

radku

3 hours ago

Why such a dislike towards DHH? More people using Linux surely is a good thing.

Edit: I was curious and it was a genuine question, not sure why all the down-votes.

dwb

3 hours ago

The extremely valid criticism is not hard to find.

https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thoug...

happytoexplain

2 hours ago

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.

dwb

an hour ago

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.

jdiff

2 hours ago

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.

pelagicAustral

3 hours ago

Good for the Linux ecosystem. People forget they are not bound to install it, if you are so sore from a blog post just use any of the other hundreds of distros out there.