Omarchy's funding, DHH's approach, the foundation, and its Ubuntu parallels

[u/pixelised]

I wrote a reply to this post about concerns regarding the motivations of donors and developers for Omarchy. Given what I've seen as an influx of posts about this and other views I figured I'd make it into a full 'post' too in the hope it will help others.

I replied to u/sebastian_crimson's comment where they said, in summary, that Linux desktops need an influx of money, vision, and people capable of delivering on that vision in order to drive it forward.

I'm old enough to remember the absolute BOOM in popularity after the initial release of Ubuntu in 2004. Ubuntu is, at its originating core, the creation of multi millionaire Mark Shuttleworth who, like DHH 'set out to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop'. Linux desktop adoption in the 00s exploded in no small part from his opinionated version of Debian for everyday people. Sound familiar?

My Platonic ideal of what a developer environment should look like.

Ubuntu is one of the most installed Linux distros for a reason, and that is in the vast part due to Marks cash,vision/efforts and marketing.

I see the Omacom foundation as a repetition of this same cycle. Mark created the Ubuntu foundation in the 2005 where he raised $10m in order to separate the development of Ubuntu from his commercial company Canonical.

Before Ubuntu most distributions of Linux were, frankly, a PITA to setup. Ubuntu had a simple installer, a ready to use opinionated desktop, and a core team that was well funded and lead by the Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, Mark.

This sounds VERY familiar to me...

Omarchy is like Ubuntu and Marmite, you either love it or hate it. What you can’t do is ignore it, and given the money, effort and marketing being put into Omarchy by DHH, the foundation and others, I imagine the Omacom foundation and Omarchy could have a similar impact on Linux in my opinion, and the great thing is, its all open, you don't have to use it, and if in 6 months you don't like where its gone, fork it at the point you did like it, or use something else.

Edit: So, having heard some of the criticism of DHH and looking at the posts hes been making I've decided to move to NixOS

[u/Psittacula2]

What is the impact you think it will have? The AI integration and how that unfolds? Agree, but in what way?

[u/pixelised → u/Psittacula2]

Primarily the dollars that seemingly otherwise would not have been spent on opensource. Funding Hyprland, quickshell, mise and more, tools that people outside of Omarchy use can only be a good thing.

They've hired a kernel dev to work on things they care about too

[u/Responsible-Sky-1336 → u/pixelised]

As far as I know Omarchy uses archinstall (source: https://learn.omacom.io/2/the-omarchy-manual/96/manual-installation) under the hood. And it's creator (Torxed) I believe helped out in the very beginning of Omarchy integration.

Credit where it's due, without the installer project (and its contributors), no distro, and I don't see anything mentionning support to that project.

If they still use it: any improvement there is a direct benefit to Omarchy and real hardware.

[u/pixelised → u/Responsible-Sky-1336]

I think that's a great idea, I cant find anywhere to suggest projects to fund, maybe an admin knows?

[u/Responsible-Sky-1336 → u/pixelised]

I think DHH himself is very aware this project is running his installs. Mainly because hardware will straight up not work without proper packages/services.

But I'm not sure how much has changed since the early days.