Omarchy setup, explained.

Transcript

Omarchy is a free, open source Linux distribution that installs a complete, opinionated desktop from a single ISO. It's built by Basecamp co-founder DHH, and it just picked up over a thousand stars in a day on GitHub's trending page. The push comes from Quattro, version four, which rewrites the whole desktop shell and can finish installing in under a minute. Here's how to set it up. First, grab the ISO. Download it with curl from iso dot omarchy dot org, then check it against the published hash with sha256sum, so you know the download wasn't corrupted or tampered with. Once it checks out, flash it to a USB stick, balenaEtcher works on Mac and Windows, caligula if you're already on Linux. Boot from that stick. You'll need to turn off Secure Boot and TPM in the BIOS first, those are Microsoft security schemes that block third party boot media. Answer a few setup questions, pick your drive, and the installer takes over. Full disk encryption is on by default, and on modern hardware, Quattro can finish the whole install in under a minute. Once you're in, most control happens through hotkeys and the Omarchy menu, but everything behind that menu is also scriptable through the omarchy command. Run it alone and it lists every group it controls, audio, bluetooth, themes, screenshots. omarchy update is the one to remember, it pulls the latest release, runs any pending migrations, and snapshots your system before touching a single package. You don't have to wipe your whole drive either. Shrink your Windows partition first, boot the installer, and choose Free Space Install instead of the full disk option. After it's done, run limine dash scan to add Windows Boot Manager back into the boot menu. A few things before you commit a machine to it. This replaces your OS, it doesn't install alongside one on the same partition. Apple Silicon Macs aren't supported yet, only Intel Macs. And if an update ever leaves things in a bad state, you can roll back to the snapshot from before that update, right from the boot loader menu. That's the setup.