Omarchy Review: Seven Weeks, Three Machines, One Verdict

I’m keeping Omarchy, DHH’s opinionated Arch Linux and Hyprland setup. It has been about seven weeks since I first installed it in early September, and it now runs on three of my machines: an x86_64 desktop with an NVIDIA RTX 3070, an M1 MacBook Pro, and an M2 Pro 14-inch MacBook Pro. On the desktop, the install, the dual boot and the GPU drivers all worked with no fuss. The laptops have some quirks, and a few updates broke things.

I kept adding machines after the M1 because I had three questions. How easy is the install on a desktop? How does Omarchy work on x86? Could it replace Windows entirely? So far I’ve been able to replace both macOS and Windows with Omarchy for day-to-day work, and it’s been fantastic. Windows still has a partition on the desktop, and I still back it up with Backblaze’s backup product.

Two caveats before the details. The seven weeks count from the first install, and the other two machines came later. Omarchy 4.5 also hit release candidate status on October 20, which changes some of what I say below.

What I like day to day

The biggest positive is that I’m no longer tethered to Windows or macOS.

After that, it’s the keyboard. Almost the whole operating system is available through key commands and keybinds.

The agent is a first-class citizen here. It has access to the whole system, so when I want something changed, it makes the change and adjusts things itself. When it does hand me instructions, they’re easy to follow. Everything is fast. The OS takes less RAM than macOS did, so I can run more agents at once than I could on my Mac. When something looks off, like a process leaking memory, I tell the agent and it goes and investigates. Giving it that agency is what speeds me up.

The second biggest positive is the plugin community. Plugins are multiplying fast, and between them they solve pretty much every problem I’ve had. Backups are a good example. On a Mac you get Time Machine, or proprietary software like Backblaze plugged into it. On Omarchy there are three or four backup plugins that sit on top of Restic or other imaging tools. It’s choose your own adventure, and each one is quite good.

The desktop: the easy machine

The desktop is a single disk with two partitions, Windows 11 and Omarchy, with Secure Boot off. It’s a dual boot, and nothing has broken in it.

The installer recognized the RTX 3070 and installed the proper drivers. I did no additional setup.

I also kept nearly every default, and I love them. That includes the video editing tools, OBS, and some of the custom software DHH has added. I didn’t go looking to replace any of it.

The desktop wasn’t trouble-free after the install. A few things needed fixing, and the hazing post covers them.

The laptops: quirks and bad updates

The two MacBooks took more work. The M1 was my first install, and I wrote that up a few days after I did it. The M1 field report has the hardware detail, the install path, and what broke during setup, so I won’t retell it here. The M2 Pro is the second MacBook, and it runs omarchy-mac 4.0.3rc4-2, which is the release line from before the 4.5 merge. It’s my daily driver. I do quite a bit of work on it and haven’t had too many issues.

The ARM quirks are mostly about compiling, or about how certain things work. Some of them showed up on the laptops and never on the desktop. I think x86 is the better-supported architecture for Linux and Arch right now. I think Omarchy 4.5 will fix some of the ARM quirks.

A few updates caused breakage. The one I remember best: after an update, the screen went blank when I opened the Super + Space menu. I got a terminal open and had Claude, my primary agent, work on it. The fix was rolling back a package version, and the whole thing took less than five minutes.

That is why a broken update doesn’t worry me much. If you can get to a terminal, an agent can often work out what an update broke. I made the longer case in Linux Setup Was a Hazing Ritual. Agents Changed It..

You do have to read what the agent does before you accept it. Omarchy’s launcher starts a lot of agents with approvals off, which I covered in the agent safety post. If you want to know whether I’d trust Omarchy’s agent-run release testing, that’s in the agent QA post.

Three things I haven’t tested on the Macs: sleep, an external display, and the webcam. I can’t tell you how any of them behave.

What changed in my workflow, and what I gave up

The M1 post ended on two things that would decide it: the container workflow, and the macOS comforts I’d lose, like iMessage, Proton and Backblaze. Here are the answers after living with it.

Containers. Builds didn’t get better on the Mac. I stopped building locally there. A one-off build goes on the desktop, and otherwise GitHub Actions runners build and deploy.

iMessage. I still miss it, and I’m still looking for a replacement. The options I’ve tried are a hassle. One needs a Mac left on so I can see and interact with my messages. Others are flaky over a direct Bluetooth connection to the phone.

Proton Mail. I installed it as a web app. In the M1 post I called the web clients less than ideal. For Mail that turned out fine: it works great, and I don’t miss the native app at all.

Proton Drive and Google Drive. I miss having native clients for both. That’s a small sacrifice.

Backups. On Omarchy I moved from Backblaze’s backup app to Restic plus B2, Backblaze’s storage service. It’s a little cheaper than what I paid before, and pretty much everything on Omarchy is backed up to B2 now.

What the 4.5 release candidate changes

The Omarchy 4.5.0-rc1 release notes went up on October 20. This is a release candidate. The notes say to try it on an existing machine with Update > Channel > RC, then Update > Omarchy. I haven’t installed it on either laptop yet, so everything below comes from reading the notes.

The laptops: the merge. 4.5 folds Omarchy Mac into Omarchy itself, which is why I think it will fix some of the quirks. My M2 Pro is on the old fork’s release line, and whether an omarchy-mac install moves over cleanly is still open. I’m tracking that in the M1 post’s 4.5 update.

Fewer reboots on ARM. One of the compatibility items is “Stop asking for a reboot after every update on ARM” (#14447). Both of my laptops are ARM.

For new installs, OBS and the video tools. The deprecations list includes “Remove OBS Studio and Kdenlive from new installs” (#14962). Those are defaults I praised above, so a fresh 4.5 install won’t have them. The notes only talk about new installs. If those tools were part of why you wanted Omarchy, check the list before you start.

For dual boot, a factory-reset fix. The notes include “Fix factory reset erasing other systems’ boot entries” (#14949). If you dual boot with Windows, as my desktop does, that line is worth reading before you ever run a factory reset. My dual boot hasn’t had a problem, so I wasn’t bitten by this.

The notes are long. These are the four items I picked as most relevant to the machines I have. Read the whole page if yours is different, since 4.5 also lists new hardware support and a lot of desktop changes that I haven’t tried.

Who it’s not for

If you won’t open a terminal when an update breaks something, Omarchy is not for you yet. My blank-screen fix only worked because I could get to one.

If you need a machine to work every Monday with no chance of an update surprising you, I wouldn’t pick a rolling release on a laptop. The updates that broke things for me were on the laptops.

If you rely on the conveniences of macOS or Windows, expect to feel the gap. Omarchy is still catching up on some of those niceties, and I wish there were more interoperability. Part of that is the walled gardens. Apple and Microsoft make some things hard to leave on purpose, and I don’t blame Omarchy for that. iMessage and the native cloud drive clients are where I feel it.

And if you’re thinking about running it on a work laptop, that’s a security question. I worked through the SOC 2 version in the company laptop post.

Is Omarchy worth it?

For me, yes. I kept adding machines, and Omarchy now covers what I used macOS and Windows for day to day. The laptops have quirks and the occasional bad update, and I think 4.5 will help with some of that. I still love it, and I wish it ran on more of my devices: the TV, my phone, the iPads.

On x86, my RTX 3070 worked with no setup. I can’t speak for other cards, but that’s where I’d start. If you’re on ARM, expect some quirks. I’m hoping 4.5 helps, but it’s still a release candidate. Read the M1 report for what that looks like on hardware. The rest of what I’ve written on this is in the Omarchy hub.

If you’re deciding whether any of this belongs on your team’s machines or in your engineering workflow, that’s the kind of call I help founders make. Here’s how I work.