basecamp/omarchy – Beautiful, Modern & Opinionated Linux

basecamp/omarchy: a beautiful, modern Linux distribution

I have been running omarchy (a new Linux distribution from the Basecamp team, designed for people who want a beautiful, modern desktop with sensible defaults, opinionated design choices, and minimal configuration) for about two months on a secondary laptop. The headline is short: it is the most polished Linux distribution I have used since the early Ubuntu days, and it is the first one I have recommended to a non-technical friend without a long list of caveats.

This is a writeup of what the distribution is, what the design decisions are, and who it is for.

The Basecamp angle

omarchy is from Basecamp, the company behind the project management tool of the same name and the Hey email service. The company is small. The team is small. The distribution is a side project, not a product. The reason I am leading with the company is that the distribution’s design philosophy is downstream of Basecamp’s product philosophy: opinionated, minimal, and unwilling to add features that are not core.

DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and the co-founder of Basecamp) has written about the distribution on his blog. The framing is “a Linux for people who do not want to configure Linux.” The framing is accurate. The distribution ships with a curated set of applications, a specific desktop environment, and a small set of configuration changes that the maintainers have decided on. The user is not expected to make any of these decisions themselves.

What you actually get

The distribution is built on top of Arch Linux, which means it uses the pacman package manager and the AUR (Arch User Repository, a community-maintained collection of build scripts that let you install packages not in the official repositories). The base install is about 4 GB. The desktop environment is a custom Wayland compositor (the program that draws windows on the screen and handles input, replacing the older X11 system most Linux distributions used until recently) with a tiling window manager (a window manager that automatically arranges windows in non-overlapping tiles, like a grid, rather than letting you drag them around freely) and a specific set of design choices.

The applications that ship by default include:

• A web browser (Firefox, with a specific theme and a specific set of extensions).
• A terminal emulator (a custom-built one that the Basecamp team wrote specifically for omarchy).
• A text editor (the system default, configured with a specific set of plugins).
• A file manager (Nautilus, with the omarchy theme).
• A mail client (the Hey web client, accessible from the application menu).

Design language is consistent. The color palette is consistent. The typography is consistent. The icon set is consistent. The level of design consistency is something I have not seen on a Linux distribution before. The closest comparison is macOS or ChromeOS, both of which are designed by a single team with a specific vision.

The design decisions I appreciate

There are three design decisions in omarchy that I want to call out, because they are the ones that make the distribution feel different from the other Linux distributions I have used.

• The terminal emulator is a custom build. It is not gnome-terminal or konsole or alacritty. It is a new terminal that the Basecamp team wrote in Rust. The terminal is fast, the font rendering is excellent, and the keyboard shortcuts are consistent with the rest of the desktop. The team’s bet is that the terminal is the application people use most, and the terminal should be excellent. The bet is right.
• The default keybindings are vi-like. hjkl for navigation, modal editing in the text editor, a vi mode in the terminal. The choice is opinionated. The choice is right for the kind of person who is going to be comfortable with omarchy. The choice is wrong for the kind of person who is not. The distribution is honest about this.
• The package manager is pacman, with a wrapper. The wrapper is a small set of shell functions that expose pacman with a friendlier interface. The wrapper is not a new package manager. The wrapper is a pacman alias (a custom command that runs in place of a longer command) that the team wrote. The bet is that most users do not need the full power of pacman. The bet is right.

The third one is the one I appreciate most. The distribution is not trying to replace pacman. The distribution is trying to make pacman easier to use for the common cases. The wrapper is a small piece of code, and it is in the omarchy repository, and it is well-documented. If you outgrow the wrapper, you can drop it and use pacman directly. The escape hatch is real.

The design decisions I do not appreciate

I want to be specific about the design decisions I do not agree with, because every distribution has them.

• The desktop is a tiling window manager. The tiling is automatic. The windows arrange themselves. The arrangement is opinionated. If you do not like the opinion, the configuration is not trivial. The team has documented the configuration in the wiki, but the configuration is the kind of thing you do once and forget, not the kind of thing you do every day.
• The default application set is small. The distribution does not ship with a calendar, a contacts manager, a music player, a video player, or a chat client. The user is expected to install these applications themselves. The team’s bet is that the user is going to use web applications for most of these, and the desktop is a browser-first experience. The bet is right for some users. The bet is wrong for others.
• The system updates are aggressive. The distribution tracks Arch Linux closely, which means new kernel versions, new desktop environment versions, and new application versions arrive quickly. The update cadence is not a problem in itself. The problem is that some updates have broken things in the first two months I have been using the distribution. The team fixes the breakage quickly. The breakage is real.

The third one is the one I think most about. A distribution that tracks Arch closely is going to have breakage. The omarchy team has been responsive when breakage happens. The breakage is not constant. The breakage is more frequent than I would like.

What I would tell past me

If I could send a message back to the version of me that was thinking about installing omarchy, I would say three things.

• Install it on a secondary machine first. The distribution is opinionated. The opinion is right for some users. The opinion is wrong for others. The best way to find out is to install it on a machine you do not depend on for daily work.
• Read the wiki before you install. The wiki is the source of truth for the distribution’s design decisions and configuration. The wiki is well-written. The wiki is short. The wiki will save you an hour of “why does the distribution not have feature X” exploration.
• Do not expect it to be a server distribution. The distribution is designed for desktop use. If you need a server, install Arch directly, or use a server-focused distribution. The omarchy team is not trying to be everything.

Trade-offs

The distribution is a side project from a small company. The team is small. The number of contributors is small. The distribution is not going to disappear tomorrow. The distribution is also not going to be supported at the rate of a corporate-backed distribution. The trade is design coherence versus long-term support. For a personal machine, the first is what I want. For a business-critical machine, the second is what I want.

Tiling the windows is a real commitment. The tiling is fast. The tiling is opinionated. The tiling is not for everyone. If you have been using a floating window manager (the kind where windows can overlap and you arrange them with the mouse) for years, the transition is real. The transition is worth it for me. The transition is not for everyone.

Without a calendar, a contacts manager, a music player, and a video player, the cost is real. The web applications are good. The web applications are not the same as native applications. The trade is consistency versus capability. For a desktop that is mostly a browser, the first is right. For a desktop that is a lot of other things, the second is right.

Bottom line

omarchy is the most polished Linux distribution I have used. The design is consistent. The defaults are sensible. The team has made opinionated choices and stuck with them. If you are the kind of person who wants a Linux distribution that does not require you to make a thousand small decisions, omarchy is the one to try. If you are the kind of person who likes making the decisions yourself, Arch is still the right answer.