3 ms·

"what the malleable computer of the future looks like" ??? Excuse me? This is just a linux shell script repository. What is the point of having $8m to maintain

by huslage 1mo ago

"what the malleable computer of the future looks like" ??? Excuse me? This is just a linux shell script repository. What is the point of having $8m to maintain a shell script?

embedding-shape 1mo ago
Might be shocking, but entirely true: They might have shared secret and private plans of what they're building to investors (donators?), where "malleable computer" is a part of those plans, and the full 100% implementation might not be in the source repository at this very moment. Just a guess from my side though, who knows, maybe shellscripts are what they see as malleable computers?
- sroerick 1mo ago
  I think it's implemented and demoed in the Quattro release
sroerick 1mo ago
Omarchy Quattro is pretty dang good. It's a lot more than any shell script I've written, certainly. If you've written a more complex one I'd love to see it. Having agents in the default environment, having everything configurable through text files, and having default agents automatically file bug reports on crashes - these are tangible quality of life improvements that you can't get on other systems. Maybe Windows and MacOS should write some shell scripts.
- hiccuphippo 1mo ago
  > default agents automatically file bug reports on crashes Is this only sending bug reports to Omarchy or to the upstream developers? I'm not sure many of them would be fond of AI slop bug reports en masse.
  - sroerick 1mo ago
    My understanding is that it only goes to Omarchy, and only with explicit permission from the user, so maybe "automatically" is a misnomer - but the diagnosis process feels very snappy
- nickjj 1mo ago
  > It's a lot more than any shell script I've written, certainly. If you've written a more complex one I'd love to see it. I've been maintaining https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice for around 8 years, it's my dotfiles that have an installer, theming and other things. I'd still absolutely classify this is a shell script / dotfiles project. I've added just enough customization to make it easy to modify most things without needing to fork the repo. I only added a GUI last year after my hardware was finally compatible with native Linux, otherwise I would have switched almost 10 years ago. Before that, it focused on command line tools and your terminal, that's because I ran it under Windows with WSL 2 but it also worked fine on native Linux even back then, macOS too because I use it on a company issued laptop. All that to say, I don't see the above as anything special. It's a batteries included dotfiles, nothing more nothing less. With that said, I'm thrilled by the environment it's allowed me to create and niri is so good. I wish I could get $8 million dollars in funding, because I'd give $7 million of that to the author of niri.
  - sroerick 1mo ago
    Cool! I used Larbs.xyz for a while. I love a good dotfiles repo. I guess I think there's a lot more in Omarchy than a dotfiles repo, I was very impressed with the demo video. Even just creating the menu and updating system is non-trivial. Mirroring the entire distro through Cloudflare seems significant also. I've not seen those in another dotfiles project.
    - nickjj 1mo ago
      Luke's videos were fun to watch. Yep, I also handle updates, some menus and generally everything to 1 shot a full system and keep it healthy. There's a 90 minute demo video. Not a lot of interest in rolling my own ISO though, I think running the arch install script directly or CachyOS if you want to use that instead is a feature. It lets you do basic things like easily create multiple users on your system, choose encryption or not, pick ext4 instead of btrfs, dual booting and other things at your discretion. Or you could sit back and run through the installer in 5 minutes by following the guide without any background knowledge and get a working result.
  - 1mo ago
tyromaniac 1mo ago
[flagged]
LelouBil 1mo ago
Honestly same, BUT if those 8M go towards financing Linux desktop projects I'm all for it.
- preisschild 1mo ago
  Depends where that funding goes towards, a lot of far right grifters in the linux sphere hate many projects in the linux desktop ecosystem (freedesktop, xorg, systemd, gnome, kde) See for example Lundukes "Woke Software" list https://github.com/BryanLunduke/SoftwarePoliticsTracker https://github.com/BryanLunduke/SoftwarePoliticsTracker
  - jasonvorhe 1mo ago
    If those projects are all grifters because you disagree with some of their politics, what do you have to show for?
    - preisschild 1mo ago
      I think you misunderstood. Its people like Lunduke hating on those projects due to their culture war bs
dewey 1mo ago
That has big Dropbox comment energy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)
- nolist_policy 1mo ago
  Omarchy is not a product though.
  - dewey 1mo ago
    What's your definition of "product"?
- huslage 1mo ago
  I don't care about the "distro" (ahem), I care about the $8m being poured into it.
  - dewey 1mo ago
    On their blog they write what the money is for, sponsoring open source projects (Not DHH's script, he doesn't need money, his words on X) like https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-to-be-exclusive-hyprland-sponsor/ https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-to-be-exc...
jasonvorhe 1mo ago
If it's a cheap, why hasn't someone else done this at this consistency? Where are the other distros easily applying a theme to basically everything on your system for example? It ships a custom theme builder Aether, Quickshell to build desktop ui elements, a new launcher and its own cli.
- huslage 1mo ago
  Fans attached to ideology and silliness. I don't care if people like it or not, $8m is a ridiculous sum of money for this.
- huslage 1mo ago
  Your straw man is rather weak. Would you like to try again? This isn't a distro. Distros build software, maintain packages, fix bugs, support kernel versions. The $8m would have been better spent on giving it to Arch directly than this grifty pretty face.
  - jasonvorhe 1mo ago
    Talking a out the definition of a Linux distro is like debating whether or not to say GNU/Linux. If that's what you're into, more power to you. Not into that myself. I'd appreciated them becoming regular supporters to Arch via donations though. Hope that'll happen.
  - Cakez0r 1mo ago
    Omarchy does all of those things
- JamesSwift 1mo ago
  I assure you there are legions of nixos users doing similar things but getting fully custom configs on the other end
thomascountz 1mo ago
I think their bet is that 8M is what it will take to go from a repo of dotfiles to Linux on the Desktop.

by huslage 1mo ago

"what the malleable computer of the future looks like" ??? Excuse me? This is just a linux shell script repository. What is the point of having $8m to maintain a shell script?

embedding-shape 1mo ago

Might be shocking, but entirely true: They might have shared secret and private plans of what they're building to investors (donators?), where "malleable computer" is a part of those plans, and the full 100% implementation might not be in the source repository at this very moment. Just a guess from my side though, who knows, maybe shellscripts are what they see as malleable computers?

sroerick 1mo ago
I think it's implemented and demoed in the Quattro release

sroerick 1mo ago

Omarchy Quattro is pretty dang good. It's a lot more than any shell script I've written, certainly. If you've written a more complex one I'd love to see it. Having agents in the default environment, having everything configurable through text files, and having default agents automatically file bug reports on crashes - these are tangible quality of life improvements that you can't get on other systems. Maybe Windows and MacOS should write some shell scripts.

hiccuphippo 1mo ago
> default agents automatically file bug reports on crashes Is this only sending bug reports to Omarchy or to the upstream developers? I'm not sure many of them would be fond of AI slop bug reports en masse.
- sroerick 1mo ago
  My understanding is that it only goes to Omarchy, and only with explicit permission from the user, so maybe "automatically" is a misnomer - but the diagnosis process feels very snappy
nickjj 1mo ago
> It's a lot more than any shell script I've written, certainly. If you've written a more complex one I'd love to see it. I've been maintaining https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice for around 8 years, it's my dotfiles that have an installer, theming and other things. I'd still absolutely classify this is a shell script / dotfiles project. I've added just enough customization to make it easy to modify most things without needing to fork the repo. I only added a GUI last year after my hardware was finally compatible with native Linux, otherwise I would have switched almost 10 years ago. Before that, it focused on command line tools and your terminal, that's because I ran it under Windows with WSL 2 but it also worked fine on native Linux even back then, macOS too because I use it on a company issued laptop. All that to say, I don't see the above as anything special. It's a batteries included dotfiles, nothing more nothing less. With that said, I'm thrilled by the environment it's allowed me to create and niri is so good. I wish I could get $8 million dollars in funding, because I'd give $7 million of that to the author of niri.
- sroerick 1mo ago
  Cool! I used Larbs.xyz for a while. I love a good dotfiles repo. I guess I think there's a lot more in Omarchy than a dotfiles repo, I was very impressed with the demo video. Even just creating the menu and updating system is non-trivial. Mirroring the entire distro through Cloudflare seems significant also. I've not seen those in another dotfiles project.
  - nickjj 1mo ago
    Luke's videos were fun to watch. Yep, I also handle updates, some menus and generally everything to 1 shot a full system and keep it healthy. There's a 90 minute demo video. Not a lot of interest in rolling my own ISO though, I think running the arch install script directly or CachyOS if you want to use that instead is a feature. It lets you do basic things like easily create multiple users on your system, choose encryption or not, pick ext4 instead of btrfs, dual booting and other things at your discretion. Or you could sit back and run through the installer in 5 minutes by following the guide without any background knowledge and get a working result.
- 1mo ago

tyromaniac 1mo ago

[flagged]

LelouBil 1mo ago

Honestly same, BUT if those 8M go towards financing Linux desktop projects I'm all for it.

preisschild 1mo ago
Depends where that funding goes towards, a lot of far right grifters in the linux sphere hate many projects in the linux desktop ecosystem (freedesktop, xorg, systemd, gnome, kde) See for example Lundukes "Woke Software" list https://github.com/BryanLunduke/SoftwarePoliticsTracker https://github.com/BryanLunduke/SoftwarePoliticsTracker
- jasonvorhe 1mo ago
  If those projects are all grifters because you disagree with some of their politics, what do you have to show for?
  - preisschild 1mo ago
    I think you misunderstood. Its people like Lunduke hating on those projects due to their culture war bs

dewey 1mo ago

That has big Dropbox comment energy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

nolist_policy 1mo ago
Omarchy is not a product though.
- dewey 1mo ago
  What's your definition of "product"?
huslage 1mo ago
I don't care about the "distro" (ahem), I care about the $8m being poured into it.
- dewey 1mo ago
  On their blog they write what the money is for, sponsoring open source projects (Not DHH's script, he doesn't need money, his words on X) like https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-to-be-exclusive-hyprland-sponsor/ https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-to-be-exc...

jasonvorhe 1mo ago

If it's a cheap, why hasn't someone else done this at this consistency? Where are the other distros easily applying a theme to basically everything on your system for example? It ships a custom theme builder Aether, Quickshell to build desktop ui elements, a new launcher and its own cli.

huslage 1mo ago
Fans attached to ideology and silliness. I don't care if people like it or not, $8m is a ridiculous sum of money for this.
huslage 1mo ago
Your straw man is rather weak. Would you like to try again? This isn't a distro. Distros build software, maintain packages, fix bugs, support kernel versions. The $8m would have been better spent on giving it to Arch directly than this grifty pretty face.
- jasonvorhe 1mo ago
  Talking a out the definition of a Linux distro is like debating whether or not to say GNU/Linux. If that's what you're into, more power to you. Not into that myself. I'd appreciated them becoming regular supporters to Arch via donations though. Hope that'll happen.
- Cakez0r 1mo ago
  Omarchy does all of those things
JamesSwift 1mo ago
I assure you there are legions of nixos users doing similar things but getting fully custom configs on the other end

thomascountz 1mo ago

I think their bet is that 8M is what it will take to go from a repo of dotfiles to Linux on the Desktop.