Protest against the Omarchy/Omacom Foundation and the tech companies and executives funding far-right open source.
Good to know what to omit, also:
Use and fund open alternatives to the boycotted tools: Bitwarden instead of 1Password, Nextcloud or Co-op Cloud instead of Dropbox or AWS, WooCommerce or Openfront instead of Shopify, Signal, Matrix, XMPP, or Delta Chat instead of Slack. Sourcehut, Gitea, or Forgejo instead of GitHub.
I bet here’s a typo, because I can’t believe Matrix is also bad
“signal, matrix, xmpp, or delta” instead of slack
Astonishing that Free and Open Source Software with little to no employees cannot compete exactly 1:1 with a VC funded company with a hundred full-time employees.
edit: 2.545 employees as of 2021. I even have to wonder how do they need so many, what for?
I think the best way to counter this is to fix Ubuntu. It has what it needs to work as an introductory distro. I don’t know what made Ubuntu so bloated and buggy but I bet it’s salvageable. I’m not saying Ubuntu was ever the greatest but it was one of the first distro to be simple to use.
When I first came over from windows in 2013 Ubuntu detected all of my hardware and would install drivers by clicking a button. That seems like not a big deal now but then it felt like a miracle, it gave me a chance to learn about Linux while it was also functional.
If omarchy takes that new user crowd it might actually be a problem. Omarchy might fail if they don’t keep stealing from Arch development.
Maybe I’m out of touch because I have no idea what new linux users go to today. Steamos? What are the usual hurdles that new users face in 2026?
I think the main problem of Ubuntu is GNOME. After version 2 it became useless, like a kid’s toy.
Fedora is the introductory distro now.
if Ubuntu can finally ditch the snaps and just use flatpak, we could recommend it again.
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I am not trying to argue this, but some people will say “It just looks like a linux distro that is designed to be more agentic friendly, even if some of its backers have unscrupulous pasts.” What is the response to this? Because I’m sure it’s vibe-coded and insecure, but there aren’t really linux distros that are agentic first distros and some computer enthusiasts really like AI. And yes, people can just install Jan or LM Studio on their own in another distro, but some people may want open source code and linux designed for AI. I know people on Lemmy often hate AI, so please don’t hate me for writing this. I just don’t totally get the reasoning aside from some people involved in the project seem to be assholes… or is that the reasoning?
To be honest, if not for security concerns I’d probably try this distro if it weren’t somehow linked to anti-trans things, which makes anything completely toxic. But I looked at the Omarchy page just to see what it looked like and conceptually for people interested in agentic stuff, it didn’t look that bad, it seemed sort of interesting.
Trans people are some of the best network engineers and coders out there and greatly help the open source community. Any open source project that isn’t kind to trans people should be ignored. Maybe that’s the point? That normally a project like this linked to anything anti-trans would be rejected by the open source community and it’s only through soulless corporations and right wing tech bros that this is existing?
This isn’t just a case of some abrasive people involved. The guy who runs the project, DHH, is an open and proud racist. He posts his very straightforward racist beliefs on his blog. He made ruby on rails, and after being rejected from the ruby community he’s now trying to insert himself into the Linux/open source community. On top of that, the “distro” is Arch + some dot files. Despite that, he’s managed to raise millions of dollars in outside funding, which is insane for open source project. Either his industry connections are willing to look past the racism and hand him a bunch of money anyway, or they actively agree with him and want to build a space for racists in the open source community.
Add in the AI stuff and people have plenty of reason to boycott this project.
Is he actually racist? I’ve read he wrote about remigration, but that’s about uncontrolled immigration, nothing to do with hatred for races
Well, the AI (LLM stuff) is right wing. It makes the last thing neoliberalism didn’t make obsolete useless. Who cares if you actually understand what you’re doing and are able to do it way better than a LLM. “You are now useless. Fuck you.”
The neoliberal ideology now made everyone useless. How can a person still be a neoliberal when you can see none of us really have any value (intellectual or otherwise), we never did. The only thing humans had was pretending to be useful (or competent in any way) and they are taking it away from us little by little.
That’s why I’m a leftist, I’ve seen basic human dignity being taken away from people since my childhood and experienced repression (as much as a minority in a non third world country can) and I know many people have it worse.
I don’t know if I agree with you because someone still needs to tell an LLM what the project is for it to work and a normal person who has no science or computer science background can’t do that efficiently or check the technical aspects of a project to make sure the AI isn’t doing something incorrectly (and eventually the AI will do something incorrectly usually). I think we need UBI sooner rather than later because so many jobs will be obsolete, but if I’m chatting with an LLM or you are and we say “is the docker container up?” or “you built a page and there’s no clear way to navigate it” or “test for what would be exposed data in the case of a breach” the AI can do that, but a normal person doesn’t even understand any of that stuff to chat with an AI about that. I know it’s awful right now for coders who are getting paid less or are underemployed, but that seems to be more of a UBI problem instead of an LLM problem. There are legitimate environmental fears however, but LLMs and data centers seem to be a cherry on top of egregious environmental policy. Environmental catastrophe is headed this way with or without the cherry and it’s not clear to me if we had good universal public transportation and banned gasoline that somehow data centers would still be an existential human risk.
I think the problem is that decision makers /people in power often don’t understand the technical jargon either. All that matters is, “is it working?” So once they see that they can get it “working” without paying for the expertise, they will take it.
The thing is also - the LLM will eventually get it wrong, but the frontier models are pretty good at fixing it if you can articulate the problem. Even non technically.
Under the hood? Impossible to understand. But it works!
Counterpoint - system architecture is really built around helping humans to build mental models of systems. If your plan is to have LLMs to all the work in the future, those mental models no longer matter the way they did in the past.
Probably, systems will break, and LLM costs will rise, and the arithmetic will shift - but that isn’t happening fast enough to stop the brain drain and negative pressure on employment and compensation.
I agree about the risk of brain drain with fewer people learning to code.
Donate to KDE and Gnome and your favorite linux programs!
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They are, but for some reason their only hobbies are contributing just to hide rainbow in the about. We can live with that 😄
Protest if you like, but I’m going to say: Stop talking about Omarchy if you want to hurt it.
The people who like it are going to like it, the ones who don’t won’t, and screaming about it just brings it to the attention of more people who never would have heard about it.
I don’t think that’s true. I’ve been bombarded with omarchy ads for months. I had no idea what is was about but it just kept popping up on my feeds. It’s good to talk about it because until now I just thought it was a new popular arch based distro.
My point is that I think a ton of the money is spent on spreading the word about the new and cool thing. It’s important to counter that campaign
Disagree on that. Those 18 million are in big parts going to go into marketing and reputation washing, specifically to people that might not be tuned into the broader Linux or even tech ecosystem. Those will not by themselves start looking up the background of a shiny Linux distro that is being hailed by everyone as a super nice and easy way to get into Linux. Some education can go a long way there.
If people “get into” Linux via Omarchy - then decide its roots are distateful, distro hopping is very easy for them to do. Similarly, if Linux experimenters give Omarchy a try ignorant of the politics behind it - I doubt very many will remain “locked in” for long. If you 18 million number refers to Omarchy’s own download count, please try to keep in perspective just how over-inflated and easily gamed those counts always are.
I find it a stretch to think that Omarchy will be whitewashing brownshirt politics sufficiently to win converts because “hey, these guys are alright, look at what a nifty distro they made…”
If people “get into” Linux via Omarchy - then decide its roots are distateful, distro hopping is very easy for them to do.
My point is that they might not ever get to the point of noticing the rot at its roots. Sure, if they notice it’s easy, but they need to even get to that point. Also, even if we know it’s easy, it might still be intimidating. They may remember how much work the jump from Windows/Apple to Omarchy was and assume it’s gonna be similar from one Linux distro to another.
If you 18 million number refers to Omarchy’s own download count
I was referring to donation amounts. 18 million dollars. That’s the most recent number I’ve seen that has been donated or promised to Omarchy, and that kind of money can do a whole lot when it’s pumped into reputation building.
I find it a stretch to think that Omarchy will be whitewashing brownshirt politics sufficiently to win converts because “hey, these guys are alright, look at what a nifty distro they made…”
Then you’re more optimistic than me. Those politics are not advertised on the frontpage*, and most people who are not already tuned into that are not gonna go hunting for it. For most it’s not gonna go further than “Oh my favorite tech influencer is rocking this awesome looking setup, gonna try that”, and from there on why would they look at anything other than the docs.
* They do have that “Backed by the oligarchy” section, and I immediately wanted to vomit when seeing that, but colleagues of mine didn’t see the issue with that until I explicitly spelled it out. We very much do live in a bubble.
I still think that giving it oxygen is a mistake, but if you insist on making that mistake, I’d go for “coloring the air” around it in an easily recognized shade and odor:
Omarchy: the new Linux distro labeled “Goose-steppy” by the community, is being developed based on donations from X, Y and Z… At present, it offers nothing of value vs these established distros: ____, _____, _____. The community is relatively un-knowledgeable and un-helpful, and the technical aspects are less well refined than the established competition. Etc. etc. etc.
Remind the world that the trains don’t actually run on-time any better under Fascists in practice. They have too many conflicting priorities, and ultimately those lead to the trains not running at all.
The people who’ll like it can be educated to do better. 40s Nazi Germany got better. Do a favour to yourself and learn about things that matter.
Denazification was never really followed through, they went after the high ranking/infamous ones. But lots of Nazi judges, civil servants, and military officers got off without punishment.
I mean did they? They just voted the AFD in.
The ironic thing there is that AfD supporters come overwhelmingly from the former East Germany… you would think they’d had enough, but apparently somehow it’s their comfort zone.
Decades of brainwashing after the wall fell
As opposed to the period before the wall fell, when it was all rainbows and butterflies and intellectual honesty.
Bonn was thirsty for that juicy commie industry, don’t think for one second it was all rainbows and butterflies on your side. Only a sucker of NATO, the CIA, the MI6 and the Mossad would think so.
Honestly, I think it’s a lot of Stockholm Syndrome. I spent a couple of weeks on the recently opened East side in the summer of 1990… the locals’ concepts of economics were - alien - like discussing a summer breeze with an octopus.
It could be worse, imagine if they were still in power since the 40s instead of the watered down SocDem they had
True, true. The US took all the remaining ones into NATO leadership though so that’s always something to remember.
This is good messaging. I’m glad someone is making it explicit. I’ll bookmark this page and share it.
Am I crazy for saying that DHH is a far-right plant and Omarchy is a plot to destroy FOSS from the inside?
I’d say he wants to purge the “woke” in FOSS
DHH is far right, clearly, I’m not sure they have a plan for destroying FOSS, they seem to be trying to normalize their worldview (which is bad enough)
If you want to point at those trying to destroy FOSS from within, point at Microsoft & Apple.
And GNOME developers 😂
Yes. You are. You people are acting like Omanchy existing will bring down democracy as we know it. Its just a project. Sure its got some weird backing and DHH is a scumbag, but y’all need to calm the fuck down. Just ignore it. It will go away.
It’s not just a program it’s a movement. It has budget of 13m usd that comes from corporations who have maybe 0.01% of their user base on linux. Why do you think that is? Why would 1Password and friends do this?
Just because their goal may not be explicitly pushing far right nationalism doesn’t mean it’s ok to ignore. They must be shunned. Their political messaging is hate and none of us should support or condone that.
But we aren’t supporting or condoning it. We also aren’t shunning them. We are signal boosting this nonsense “distro” into the stratosphere. I am extremely online when it comes to tech and Linux. The first I heard of Omarchy is complaints on Lemmy. I’ve seen like three total people talk about it outside of lemmy. All of them were easy to skip ads. The actions here instead flood the feed with news about it over and over and over.
Normally the impact of a small group of people wouldnt matter but we are the exact demographic that they want reach with this. and y’all are doing the work for them.
They won’t listen… here’s a response to a similar comment I saw in another thread:
Ignoring fascists and hoping they go away is one reason why fascism is having a resurgence right now
You can’t reason with unreasonable people.
How’s that unreasonable, fascism did a comeback because it wasn’t completely kept at bay.
I will continue never using it
And I salute your action of inaction! 🫡
I even ask myself if ignoring them and leaving them to the irrelevance they deserve would be a better move than giving them the free “advertising” and probably even boosting their ego.
I would agree if they did not have that much oil money backing them this kinda needs to be talked about imo
I’m right there with you. If anyone asks me about it, my response is “imagine that Arch Linux and OpenAI were going to have a child, but they were both doing too many drugs and alcohol, smoking 3 packs of camels per day each and lived near a garbage burning field in a Saharan country, Omarchy is the material resulting from that miscarriage”.
There’s just too many good Linux distros out there for me to even entertain the idea of ever giving that shit a chance.
“That sounds…dramatic! I may have to check it out, just for the train wreck!”
“Pre-configured Arch with agentic AI baked in.”
*with a CLAUDE.md
Oh Omarchy is “agentic” now? Is there a change they can point to that made it so?
Also the phrase “agentic Linux for the age of agents” makes my brain bleed.
It comes with claude.md and some skills. Basically nothing you can’t setup in 15 minutes and a claude prompt on any linux distribution yourself. They claim “because omarchy is just text configs llms understand it very well” when all linux and all distributions are configured through text.
Agentic linux is awesome though but you’d bave to be brain damaged to do it on mutable distro.
So you’re saying atomic fedora linux and just giving an agent lots of access is safer than omarchy?
Yes, immutable linux can be made much safer. With overlays none of the projects compete for config so agents are much less likely to introduce bugs and access important context by accident basically just by reading explicit immutable configs. We’re rolling everything on nixos now and it’s really good. Immutable linux has basically won imo.
People use Brave even though Peter Thiel is one of its main investors. People use Brave even though it was created by Brendan Eich, a homophobe and Trump supporter
The vast majority of people don’t know that or couldn’t care less about it, who’s behind it isn’t even a thing worthy of thought for many. It’s sad and sucks but it’s the truth.
More interesting example: people use Firefox despite Google being main donator. I know it’s more complicated, but yeah, Mozilla wouldn’t survive otherwise.
Brendan Eich, a homophobe and Trump supporter
Even worse, the creator of JavaScript
</s>I had the sense that the general consensus in the inner tech circles is that Brave is bad and Firefox is good.
Its the outer ring of the tech circles still privvy to Brave.
Nope, not everyone uses Brave
Yeah but is it a reason not to do anything? Some people don’t care, some are unaware. For the last ones we should keep pushing for making tech landscape a betted place for everyone
Omarchy is a distro in the same way that I’m a fighter pilot because I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.
Great allegory! It’s a distro in the same way that Bob was done with his homework by having handed in Alice’s copy of it and called it a day.
…The heck happened?
I’ve been under a rock for a bit.
Explain to me: why is there so much hype (and controversy) around some Hyperland Arch Linux config, within like a month? Is this some astroturfing thing?
They bought coverage. There is 0 reasons to use Omarchy over well… about anything. It’s like using Ubuntu despite Mint existing, but they also lack reputation, are evil, have had relatively many vulnerabilities in a short time frame, and have shady backing. I refuse to believe that anyone who promotes Omarchy daily drives it nor does not receive monetary compensation.
Disclaimer: I only know bits of this story and am missing details.
Creator vibe codes configs, makes a “distro”
Creator says fairly fucked up things online, effectively a “dog whistle” gathering right aligned attention and money- and a quite a lot of it.
Begins hiring similarly minded people, claiming “the money will be spent” on the distro
All of it wreaks of BS.
Yeah. Kinda feels like OpenClaw and a few ‘trends’ before that.
Positive polarization: a lot of rich people are donating a lot of money to it, maybe (probably?) because the creator is well-connected and the OS makes lots of references to AI. Negative polarization: The creator has bad opinions, and the OS is very AI-forward.
Probably the digital ocean donation.
Aside from this dickhead and his shitty worldview, the OS is nothing more than a curated experience with what could be some fucking awful and dangerous AI implementations. I don’t understand how people with any modicum of tech literacy wouldn’t pass on this fucking thing INSTANTLY. I have always had mixed views on networkchuck, but to see him pumping this fucking thing up was pretty much my tipping point to writing him off completely.
And regarding DHH… I don’t know how you could listen to this guy talk, and not get the Euroid sociopath vibes. Plus his little harem of fanboys are presumably gonna be jumping in at this point. It’s just fucking gross. I passed on this months ago, and I will continue to pass.
I believe the ones pumping it up are the “AI bros” and “tech bros” AKA non-technical folks. These types don’t actually have the skills or knowledge to put together something like this themselves so they rally around Omarchy because that work has already been done for them.
Yeah and sprinkle the whole thing with agentic AI that can have root access for these people… It’s pretty damn yikesy lol I think a lot of people are gonna get hurt, unfortunately.
Just thinking of the poor bastard with the giant obsidian brain that has been the pride of his life for the past 5 years.
Network chuck is someone I really liked when his channel was small, but once I realized he was posting videos that were 5 minutes long with a 1.5 minute ad plug, I was done. He always posts software that is just a free tier of something when there is probably a free and good option instead.
Yeah, I’m on the same boat. Shit, I would even drink coffee at his pace when watching his videos. He’s dropped real low in the lat year or 2.
Then there’s Tom Lawrence for networking. Objective, each tool has it use case and he will push nothing, basically just voice hos opinions and why. Like if Louis Rossmann was all about networking and way less angry 🤣. Full disclosure, I fucking love Rossmann, my wife hates him.
In this chapter of American deregulation, Rossmann is truly doing the fucking Lord’s work.
How is this not straight up FUD? DHH is a very good developer, better than 90% of his detractors. Omarchy is popular for the same fucking reason that Linux was never the desktop of choice until Windows literally forced people to use it. It’s a good default configuration of a collection of applications, put together in a cohesive, but opinionated way, by a person actually using the product AND wanting to be productive with it.
It’s just a hyprland arch config bundle exactly the way Ubuntu is just a GNU Linux bundle. Sane people don’t want to spend weeks configuring the most basic shit.
DHH is a very good developer
Yeah Omarchy is clearly high quality code written by a smart guy
Sane people don’t want to spend weeks configuring the most basic shit.
theres plenty of distributions and flavours they can choose from, having a long history of being well maintained and without core maintainers and supporters having hostile views on the world.
DHH is a very good developer
He has good qualities, or he’d have never become where he is today, but in case you haven’t been around Rubyists much, most of us follow MINASWAN, and he clearly doesn’t. More importantly, he’s also shown support for Tommy Robinson in his own blog. It doesn’t take a genius to see what he’s doing.
Linux was never the desktop of choice until Windows literally forced people to use it.
Think of it as DHH forcing people to look elsewhere, then. There are plenty of excellent distros out there that aren’t controlled by terrible people and work just fine.
Nothing will stop them at this point. They’re our masters. The only thing that might make any difference is a general strike. We tried that. Most workers are too afraid.
Yeah, don’t use Omarchy, not sure why anyone would need to since there are versions with more stable support and a myriad of other free options for every niche. The site lists many great reasons not to use it, that is appreciated.
I don’t use Cloudflare but I’ll say that’s probably the hardest service for people to leave because it’s been the easiest to set up and forget.
Now my one gripe. The People to Avoid category is a weird omelette that put together multiple lists of people and brands them all as fascists to avoid. It’s a set of massive purity test retcons that are not productive because it mixes overt bigots (Yarvin) and Silicon Valley grifters (Dorsey) with people that are living foundations of open source who are accused of odd behaviour.
Is rms going around harassing women? Cuz the last talk I watched of him he was battling cancer. (I have read the Stallman Report, but as far as I interpret it he is just trying to make sense of normally taboo topics by writing it out, even if the way he writes it out people feel harmed or creeped out about it because it doesn’t match today’s accepted norms.) I wouldn’t ask him for dating advice but I wouldn’t hesitate to ask him for computer advice. Louis Rossman has an opinion that I believe is wrong, but not one he holds strongly enough that he would discriminate or disrespect a customer over it or let it interfere with the goals of owning goods you buy.
Yes, question the questionable parts, but to avoid them altogether is excessive IMHO, each should be taken case-by-case.
Everyone, without exception, is flawed in certain ways. While there are people that make their flaws their whole identity, which you should avoid, for those who don’t, you have accept to a certain degree to achieve solidarity and accomplish things bigger than themselves. That degree doesn’t have to be charitable as me, but my opinion is that lists that make it seem all equally bad is disingenuous.
If those individuals want to distance themselves from a Nazi movement, they can do so. They can put out statements clarifying their association. RMS battling cancer is an extreme case.
Right in the paraphrased quote declaring Rossman a transphobe he doesn’t care enough to be trans-exclusive, in fact I’d argue the main point is that the culture war is stupid and unproductive, he’d prefer to be inclusive because it’s irrelevant, that seems like clarification to me and it’s the author muddying the waters up with the bad paraphrasing. His organization FULU is funded by an organization called FUTO led by someone who is a loose acquaintance of a fascist supporter (fixed). I know almost exactly how Rossman picked up some chud-like opinions, it’s because he got bullied and screwed over so hard in New York, not from any other relationship. No evidence has been presented that he has anything to do with Omarchy, MAGA, or right-wing fascist movement, including that comment.
I want people not to confuse some latent opinions with a lack of integrity.
The full comment for context
I have my own idea of what a man or a woman is that I am going to guess is different from the politician in question. That being said, bringing this shit up all the time is absolutely counterproductive and useless. Especially when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Imagine if I was talking to a politician who weighed 400 pounds and agreed with me on an issue that mattered. And let’s say that person did not like being referred to as fat because they do not think they are overweight. Would it be incumbent upon me to point out that they are fat? What benefit does that do for me? If this person is trying to help me not get screwed over by companies that lie and cheat to get laws passed in their favor so they can rob us blind, it’s not really important in that moment that I point out that that person is in fact obese. What their personal belief of “obesity” is is a useless discussion that has nothing to do with my own actions and identity.
What people choose to do in their own homes or what they choose to call themselves is their business and is not something I care to discuss.
What matters more than that to me is what people tell me I am not allowed to do in my own home with the products that I bought and paid for. That is an issue that is much more important to me.
Rossmann has worked with FUTO, but his organization is FULU Foundation.
Thanks for the correction. Is this right now? I want to represent it as faithfully as possible.
His organization FULU is funded by an organization called FUTO led by someone who is a loose acquaintance of a fascist supporter
I’ve been to a few conferences and talks where Stallman was in the audience.
He often spoke up and asked why things weren’t free open software, even after one was explained how it would be a non-profit educational web service.
He wasn’t wrong, but he was often a dick about it.
He also rarely had shoes on, just socks. At least around the MIT campus in those days.
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No no no, you don’t get it.
Everyone to my right that I don’t like is a Nazi.
Everyone to my left that I don’t like is an ultra.
People around the same political position that I don’t like are all trots.
If you disagree with me you’re gas lighting.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Everyone to my right that I don’t like is a Nazi.
No, nazis are nazis. If you argue for ethnic cleansing the bare minimum you can expect is some pushback, no one owes your opinions any respect as a baseline.
