Omarchy - Arch and Hyprland

Omarchy is great. Seriously. It is a way for you to get Arch Linux with Wayland and Hyprland without getting your hands dirty, and learning how to configure. It is a way to use arch, without ever using Arch. But, to make it yours in a true Linux fashion, you will configure the tools according to your liking and even install new packages.

As ARCH aficionados probably see Omarchy as blasphemy and the non-purist love it, there is literally a section in the docs how you can install Omarchy in bare mode without any pre-bundled GUI apps. There's even an item in the FAQ to uninstall everything with one yay command, if you don't like it.

Why I like it

I have been wanting to return to Arch for about 6 months. It newer happened because the initial work to set up an Arch system is quite a lot of manual labor and tinkering. With Omarchy, I got most of my basic tools preinstalled and compiled.

The Hyprland window manager is my favorite and a window manager is a must for me.

Omarchy is mostly focused on providing free, open source software, but it's not religious about it. Sometimes the best solution is a commercial offering, and that's just fine.

Alacrity is a good terminal, but I did add Warp to the mix. Other ones I like are Lazy Docker, Lazygit, Neovim with LazyVim, Spotify and WhatsApp.

All the TUI and GUI things are great to have and helps you to get started. I would say this is the best way to get introduced to Arch Linux and Tiling Window Managers.

Key bindings are easy to check and changes.

What I Don't like

Arch is Arch, and you need to understand that things will break from time to time. But the productivity will still be worth it.

Some of the apps included are commercial ones and not the ones I prefer to use.
And a lot of Google services I don't use.

But, it's Linux, so I just swap them for my favorites.

A lot of Google services I don't use.

The System tools

TUI's

• Lazygit is a delightful alternative to something like the GitHub Desktop application, and it runs inside the terminal.
• Lazydocker is made in the same spirit as Lazygit, and also gives you a terminal interface for managing your containers and images.
• Btop is a beautiful resource manager that shows memory, CPU, disk, and network usage. It also lists all active processes, and allows you to manage them.
• Impala is a TUI for managing your Wi-Fi connection. You hop between sections on tab, then select a network with space. If a password is needed, just input and hit return. It's available by clicking the Wi-Fi icon in the top menu bar.
• Fastfetch shows system information, like kernel version, uptime, theme, CPU, memory, and more. It's a successor to the popular neofetch tool.

Open GUIs 

• Obsidian is a free and highly extensible note-taking application that uses simple Markdown files for storage.
• Pinta is a basic image editing tool that's great for cropping, resizing, and other basic manipulations. Just don't expect a Photoshop alternative. But it's still got a Magic Wand and layers!
• LocalSend lets you send files to other devices on the same network running the app, like Apple's AirDrop. It's cross-platform, though, so you can send files to and from Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and of course Linux.
• LibreOffice is a complete office package with word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, drawing application, and more. It's compatible with files from Microsoft Office, so this is a great way to be able to open those Word documents.
• Signal is the pioneer of E2E encrypted messaging, and a great communication option for anyone who'd prefer not to go through one of the big tech conglomerates.
• mpv is a simple, fast media player that'll play almost anything from any source. Great for watching videos.
• OBS Studio lets you record or stream video from multiple inputs. You can mix a screencast with a webcam with a microphone input. It's what was used to record the Omarchy screencasts.
• Kdenlive is an excellent video editor. Perfect for working on video that comes out of OBS Studio before sharing it.

Commercial GUIs

Here are some of the options provided for an easy installation.

• 1password is a great solution, which also comes with a command line tool for integrating key lookups in scripts. Keeping your passwords in a password manager is a best practice. Doubly so if you're working with a team.
• Typora is a minimal, distraction-free writing tool in the same spirit as iA Writer for the Mac and Windows. Like Obsidian, it uses Markdown for formatting, but in a way that's focused on writing individual pieces or essays and very little else.
• Dropbox is a great way to sync files between machines while keeping a backup in the cloud. To set it up, select Install > Service > Dropbox from the Omarchy menu.
• Tailscale is a mesh VPN that makes getting access to all your computers and servers over the internet securely super simple way. To set it up, select _Install > Service > Tailscale from the Omarchy menu.
• Spotify is the world's most popular streaming music service. And the Linux application provides everything you'd expect, including offline playing.

Development Tools

• Editor 
  Omarchy ships with Neovim by default, and uses the LazyVim distro. It's an awesome terminal-based editor built on the proud legacy of Vi, which stretches all the way back to the 70s. It's a delightful, but acquired taste. It's the only editor that's tied into the theme switcher by default.
• Environment 
  Omarchy supports setting up a whole host of development environments through the Install > Development section of the Omarchy Menu (Super + Alt + Space). You'll of course find Ruby on Rails, but also all three major runtimes for JavaScript (Node.js, bun, Deno), as well as popular PHP frameworks like Laravel and Symfony. Oh, and there's .NET, OCamal, Zig, and Elixir too. It's a very broad selection!
  
  The majority of these environments are managed by Mise. It's a tool that lets you install and run multiple versions of a programming language on the same machine. It's like rbenv or rvm for Ruby or virtualenv for Python, but it works for a bunch of different environments.
  
  To install, say, Ruby 3.3, you'd run mise use -g [email protected], which will both install Ruby 3.3 and set it as the global default. Or, if your project has a .ruby-version file, you can just run mise i in the root of that project.
• Docker hardly needs any introduction. It allows you to run isolated containers, and Omarchy installs everything needed to run it well. This includes Docker itself, Docker Compose, and the user group changes needed for you to run Docker as the normal user and not as root.
• The GitHub CLI let's you authenticate with your GitHub account and clone private repositories using it. To authenticate, run gh auth login. Then you can check out private repositories using gh repo clone org/repo.

Working with PDF

Omarchy ships with a nice, basic PDF viewer called Document Viewer. This is the program that'll open any PDFs you just double-click on.

But you can only use Document Viewer to fill out PDFs that have been set up as forms. If you need to fill out PDFs that haven't, or you need to sign a PDF, you'll have to right-click the file, select Open With..., and pick Xournal++.

Web Apps

These web apps live in ~/.local/share/applications. You can make your own or remove the default ones by cloning or deleting these files.

• HEY is an email and calendar service that serves as a great alternative to people tired of Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail. It's made by 37signals where Omarchy originated.
• Basecamp is a project management service that helps small teams move faster and make more progress. Instead of patching together a mishmash of Trello, Slack, Asana, Notion, or whatever, you can have it all in one place with Basecamp. It's made by 37signals where Omarchy originated.
• ChatGPT is the most popular AI chatbot in the world.
• WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world, and the web version is a great option for Linux.
• X is where news break and hate takes over.
• YouTube is the most video platform in the world.
• Zoom is the most popular video chat system used in the US. Great connections across the world. And 40-minute meetings can be held without a paying account.

You can easily add new web apps through Install > Web App in the Omarchy menu.
If you wish to remove a web app, just go to Remove > Web App in the Omarchy menu.

Gaming 

Two of the best options for playing games on Omarchy are Steam (modern games) and Retroarch (retro games). And of course we have Minecraft.

Other Packages You Might Need

Arch has an amazing wealth of packages available for almost any type of software between the Official Arch Repository and the Arch User Repository.

It couldn't be easier to use either. You install a new Arch package by going to Install > Package in the Omarchy menu and typing the package you want.

You can do the same with AUR, just use Install > AUR.

If you want to remove a package, you can use Remove > Package from the Omarchy menu. It'll remove package, config files, and dependencies.

References

Omarchy ^[1] TUI ^[2] FOSS GUI ^[3] Comersial GUI ^[4] Tools [^t] Hyprland ^[5]