What Is Omarchy Linux, and Why Is 37signals Moving to It?
If you’ve never heard of Omarchy Linux, you’re not alone. But thanks to the software company 37signals moving to it, that may change.
I’ve been using Linux since I ftp’ed the source code down from MIT in 1990. I’ve used over a hundred distros over the years, but I confess I’d barely heard of Omarchy Linux. That’s changing now that 37signals, the software company behind the project management program Basecamp and Ruby on Rails, is making Omarchy the business’s default desktop operating system.
So what is it? Omarchy Linux is an opinionated configuration of Arch Linux combined with the Hyprland tiling window compositor. It’s designed to deliver a turnkey, modern development environment with elegant defaults and a strong UX focus. It was created by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), 37signals CTO and best known as the creator of Ruby on Rails.
DHH designed it to be a developer’s Linux desktop. It’s not the only such distro. Others include Bluefin, Fedora and Solus. In particular, Omarchy comes with carefully selected tools, shell aliases, themes and shortcuts.
DHH’s Preferred Workflow
These features reflect DHH’s preferred workflow. So, for example, on Omarchy, everything — and I mean everything — is done from the keyboard. You use Hyprland to quickly jump from window to window using only the keyboard. Its developers claim, “It takes a little while to get used to navigating your desktop like this, but once you do, it’ll be hard to go back to a traditional mouse-driven desktop experience!”
The built-in developer tools reflect this keyboard-first orientation. For instance, the default editor is Neovim. This, in turn, has been customized with the LazyVim configuration.
For now, to install Omarchy, you must first install Arch Linux and then run the Omarchy setup script. This will also set up the notoriously difficult-to-configure Hyprland compositor. In other words, Omarchy is a set of scripts and configs layered atop vanilla Arch. The idea is to “bottle” DHH’s work desktop in a reproducible and turnkey form. For those who’d like a simple ISO for installation, DHH has promised that an ISO version will be coming soon.
Omarchy by @dhh is bad for the economy
Before omarchy I was thinking about buying either a maxxed up framework laptop or an m4 macbook pro
Ended up spending no money and instead revived an old thinkpad t450s from 2015. It runs so fast it feels like a brand new machine
— tamer (@tamerica_94), August 14, 2025
The Desktop for 37Signals
Moving forward at 37signals, DHH said on X (formerly known as Twitter), “We’re going all-in on Omarchy at @37signals. Within the next three years — as hardware becomes due for a refresh — we’re moving everyone on our Ops and Ruby teams onto Omarchy.”
In more detail, DHH explained, “everyone working in Ops and on the Ruby programmer teams should be moving to Linux with Omarchy — unless there are specific, compelling reasons not to. That means that by 2028, the vast majority of programmers and all of ops should be on Linux.” Today, most of these people are on Macs running macOS.
DHH knows this won’t be easy. However, he’s sure that most people will be able to make the move. Still, “If, for some reason, you simply can’t make the jump, we’ll find a way to work it out. It’s more important that you stay long-term productive in your environment than we get 100% adoption here.”
Even so, at 37signals, “We’re going to make The Year of Linux on The Desktop a thing here.”
