Thread

KDE turns 30 and someone's brought an AI-native desktop proposal

43 points · 57 comments · pndy

unified101 · 1789893115 · focus · HN ↗
News piece with unnecessary annoying editorializing.
I think the idea of plasma widgets and rails fully being customized per user giving them material control on ones desktop is a good idea.
We need good ideas to counter and take on the omarchy nonsense.
1. bingemaker · 1789893757 · focus · HN ↗
  When you say omarchy, are you talking about this <a href="https://omarchy.org/" rel="nofollow">https://omarchy.org/ ?
  1. microtonal · 1789894124 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, the set of dotfiles by DHH for Arch that has raised 18.5 million dollar, while real distributions and desktops are struggling to get donations. Having a few billionaire friends who share your techbro politics helps I guess.
    Kon5ole · 1789898056 · focus · HN ↗
    Much of the visuals and features in Omarchy is config yes but going from a blank drive to useful development environment in one minute is not just a set of dotfiles. It's clearly a distro now.
    Don't let politics cloud your thinking. There are a lot of good reasons to like Omarchy, and other distros should pay attention to the substance.
    Omarchy shows how it's possible to realize a very clear, distinct vision of how desktop computing should be. I'd like to see the same amount of effort put into realizing several other visions!
    An LLM will happily take an instruction like "my currently super-tweaked Debian install is awesome, create a set of scripts that recreates the exact setup starting from a minimal netinstall". It will create a VM, install the base debian, iterate until it's right. You can have it make a user-friendly UI on top of the scripts, have it install drivers, commercial software that Debian shuns from their distro, and so on.
    If you have good taste and attention to detail, your setup might have universal appeal. You will have created a Debian flavour that might be better than anything anyone gets when installing official Debian.
    If you have poor taste and attention to detail, at least you have a one-command way to get your familiar janky setup installed from scratch. :)
    jorvi · 1789899985 · focus · HN ↗
    I wouldn't exactly call Omarchy "good taste". Not that it's terrible, but pretty much the only reason it caught attention is because of the creator.
    Kon5ole · 1789904369 · focus · HN ↗
    Surely you are only thinking of the visuals then? I can certainly understand that, but the visuals are not what I mean.
    Things like:
    - Sweating that the install should take a minute. - Ensuring that when you change themes, most relevant apps also change themes. - Including popular commercial apps with 0 friction. - Consistent design in menus, features and default apps. - Clear explanations of how everything works, including video demos.
    All of that is good taste, and would be good taste even if the visuals were "My little pony" or "Lovecraftian horror" instead of 80s retro. ;-)
    jorvi · 1789916152 · focus · HN ↗
    The only "commercial app" it themes automatically is Chromium. Obsidian you have to manually theme, the rest is just DE stuff that other distros also automatically theme.
    There's just nothing about Omarchy that makes it special or "good taste", in the sense that something like Regolith[0] is special. Or NixOS or uBlue.
    I'll say again, Omarchy only got attention because of its creator, and now it is draining away funding from other Linux DE stuff. Bad taste.
    [0]<a href="https://regolith-desktop.com/" rel="nofollow">https://regolith-desktop.com/
    Kon5ole · 1789920465 · focus · HN ↗
    I messed upp the list, didn't mean to imply that it can theme any commercial app.
    It was a separate point - Omarchy lets you install commercial apps as easily as any other app. Including things like Spotify, Claude Code, Codex, steam and even Windows itself (as a VM). All from the same menu and mechanisms. That's just undeniably useful.
    Also, Omarchy does theme not only Chromium, but VS Code for example, and several other "blessed" apps. I get the impression that you haven't actually tried it?
    Regolith is similar to Omarchy in many ways but is an older initiative that hasn't gotten as far despite having had more time.
    When I look up how to install apps in Regolith it says "use debian package tools" (sad trombone). That's clearly worse than Omarchy.
    You can decide that Regolith isn't gaining traction because it's not made by a techbro mascot if you wish but I think the explanation is easy - Omarchy is clearly better.
    I'm not saying it being by DHH hurts of course, but IMO it's less about him being connected than it is about his enthusiasm and energy. If being well connected was all it takes we'd all be living in the metaverse now. :) There has to be substance.
    It'd be fun to see if there are other initiatives that are as polished as Omarchy - the latest Omarchy demo is here[1], if anyone has links to similar demos of other setups it'd be fun to compare.
    AFAIK Omarchy is the slickest one around so far but I hope open-minded devs will take inspiration and start competing instead of just dismissing.
    [1]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7fe9pa8OeE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7fe9pa8OeE
    jorvi · 1789936792 · focus · HN ↗
    > Omarchy lets you install commercial apps as easily as any other app. Including things like Spotify, Claude Code, Codex, steam and even Windows itself (as a VM). All from the same menu and mechanisms. That's just undeniably useful.
    Both Gnome and KDE have done this for years..
    > Also, Omarchy does theme not only Chromium, but VS Code for example, and several other "blessed" apps. I get the impression that you haven't actually tried it?
    Literally their own documentation says it only themes Chromium and you have to do Obsidian manually. That also points to another of its biggest criticisms: because its vibecoded (including the documentation), it is basically a house of cards.
    > It'd be fun to see if there are other initiatives that are as polished as Omarchy
    I mean, if you just care about riced setups there's stuff like this[0]. But both in Omarchy and that setup, the beauty is only skin deep. If you dip your toe even one bit out of the tested paths, you're gonna run into regular Linux ugliness. Its not something I mind (I run NixOS on my desktop and homelab server and clients), but Omarchy shouldn't be venerated as some new era of Linux desktop. Its not.
    It wouldn't even be much of a problem only if Omarchy wasn't suddenly getting millions in funding. That money should go elsewhere.
    [0]<a href="https://youtu.be/kYZ5mkGuQEg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/kYZ5mkGuQEg
    Kon5ole · 1789972448 · focus · HN ↗
    >Both Gnome and KDE have done this for years..
    No they don't, they don't even consider it their job to do it. It's the job of the distro's package manager, or a 3rd party app wrapper like Snap or Flatpak.
    You can of course configure a distro using KDE and Gnome so that the experience becomes as good, if you want. Which is how things have been in Linux for decades. "Walk the last mile yourself".
    My point here is that Omarchy shows that there is a last mile to be walked. By having commercial apps included it becomes interesting for commercial vendors to invest in.
    I think that (and the overall buzz) is the main reason why it's getting funding. A hundred thousand wealthy geeks installing a platform where our apps are trivial to install and we won't have to deal with MS or Apple if it takes off? Ok, have a bag of cash why not.
    Distros where it takes a nerd to even figure out how to install the official nvidia drivers? Nah.
    >Literally their own documentation says it only themes Chromium
    Ok so you haven't tried it. Then I understand. It's not just skin deep, but you won't know that from just looking.
    I'm not saying it's a "new era" of anything btw. I'm just saying there are good ideas there that could benefit any DE or distro.
    jorvi · 1789981539 · focus · HN ↗
    I am telling you again and again that other distros already do this.... there is nothing special about being able to install Spotify from the get go in a unified installer together with packages, you can do the same on Gnome or KDE with their respective software center apps.
    You're just overly enamored. Omarchy has nothing special behind it except the dude who made it.
    Kon5ole · 1790019211 · focus · HN ↗
    >I am telling you again and again that other distros already do this....
    "This" includes installing in a literal minute, having codex, claude code, vs code etc installed as easily as emacs with 0 extra config. Also things like localsend, tailscale, bitwarden etc. Very useful stuff and it all "just works".
    Do your nameless distros do that too?
    >Omarchy has nothing special behind it except the dude who made it.
    I don't care who made it, just how good it is. You seem to care too much about who made it to ever discover how good it is. ;-)

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