I have been living on a modified version of Omakub for a while now. That is DHH’s Ubuntu setup, the one he pushed when Rails 8 was all about getting comfortable on Linux again. I am a long term Rails developer, so that whole pitch made sense to me. I never jumped to the Arch sibling.

Then Omarchy Quattro dropped. Same guy, different OS. Arch Linux, which I have never used before. These are my first thoughts while I poke at it. Not a review. Just what jumped out.

If you want the official tour, DHH’s YouTube intro and the getting started manual are the place to start.

This machine

I am testing on a MacBook Air from 2013 which is about as powerful as a seashell. This thing will not run macOS anymore but it seems snappy and fun again. Weirdly when it was a mac, some cert went bad so it didn’t want to get the correct time, which meant web connections were droppping because without time, https doesn’t work.

But now the old girl is back in action. Install took 7 minutes and 13 seconds, which only seems slow to me because DHH is getting sub-1-minute times on his minor-deity powered machines.

How it looks

From the start I like the default startup image. The road makes me think of a Top Gear adventure or a fantastic road trip. Like we are going somewhere.

I also like the idea of the Super button instead of a bunch of apps on the left bar. One key. Go find the thing. Done.

Omarchy Quattro startup background: a winding road through pink and purple mountains at sunset

How it drives

Keyboard driving sounds cool. I never did it on Omakub and I still use the mouse a lot but this Omarchy feels.. better. Just a matter of taste in the end but I like it.

I also like the tiling window manager and how the windows auto. You open something and it just finds a place. Less dragging boxes around and more flow.

I like the workspace hopping back and forth too, though I wonder how this works on a 2 screen setup. DHH seems to be driving a single big screen while I am sitting with two 27 inch screens, one of which is in portrait mode. That is the next thing I need to feel out for real.

How I am learning

So far when the screen gets messed up I just hit Super + K and try commands that look likely to fix it, which also helps me learn in the process. Break something, open the menu, poke the button that sounds right. It is a pretty good way to get oriented without reading a novel first.

Things I want to poke at

I still think 1Password is weird that I need to pay for password management. Be a real coder and learn Bitwarden. I would rather own the vault myself.

Conclusion

I like it. I am making my desktop / primary computer Omarchy ASAP. DHH still has great taste in computers.