I'm confused, Omarchy is MIT licensed. It means you can use it and keep all the rights. You are under no obligation to financially or politically support the people who contribute code and they do not get a say with how you use the software.

EDIT: Also literally posting this to a Lemmy instance...

Well, you could configure your desktop this way on basically any linux distro!

Theres nothing special about Arch that makes this easier, just the vague feeling of superiority that comes with having made it on a distro that prides itself on not being user friendly(and the fact that obscure packages are usually in the AUR).

I had a pretty radical wayfire + sawfish + crystal dock setup on opensuse tumbleweed for a while. Opensuse has OBS, which is basically like AUR but more user friendly and with a bit more security. But I didnt need it, since they had everything I wanted in the main repo.

https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/a-word-on-omarchy/

Go with CachyOS and hyprland.

You should try nixos next, then you can find another set of configs you like and plug them in, but this time you can customize them.

love the keyboard oriented aproach. I love the super-button. I love the menus. I love the nvim setup. I love the desktop layout.

You love hyprland. Use it then.

Just go with CachyOS. it will allow you to install hyprland during the install process and provide you with Cachy's dotfiles of it and everything you need right off the bat which you can then further configure yourself or just clone the omarchy dotfiles if you so wished.

EndeavourOS is fine but I always had issues installing it via ventoy (i.e. it doesn't.) so I can't recommend it. With endeavour you'd have to manually install hyprland, manually configure it from the get go, manually install kitty, etc etc etc. Cachy will just save you a bit of time and give you a solid base to start from for everything. Plus the CachyOS kernel is pretty good which is an added bonus. I use it on my NixOS system.

Isn't omarchy just a preconfigured Arch + Hyprland + Dmenu?

I never went that route have always been using Arch with gnome until I like you liked what I saw with Hyprland (it was before Omarchy blew up) and just configured it myself over time and pushed my configuration public once it was stable enough: https://git.jeena.net/jeena/hypr-dotfiles

It's just dot files (configuration files) anyway.

In the beginning I sometimes had to log in to gnome because some things didn't work but over time it happened less and less.

EndeavourOS is basically Arch with some config and a GUI installer. I'd suggest you start there as a base

If you like Arch and want fresh packages (e.g. new window managers) but you don't want to fiddle too much with it, you can go for EndeavousOS which is super easy to install. Then add Hyprland (which is used by Omarchy) or Mango (better choice IMO) or Niri (for a new experience) on top of it. Check out !unixporn@lemmy.world and look at their configs/dotfiles. Copy the ones you like.

You could always fork them. That's one of the wonderful things about Linux and FOSS. Straight copy the code to a new project. That may be beyond your current skill set but it's always an option.

I mean you only have three paths really. Distro-hop until you find something else. Start with a pre-built like mint or fedora and make it what you want or build from scratch.

I distro hopped for a long time, then ended up going through the basic arch install one weekend and omg it's easy now with their archinstall script, I've gotten lazy and just use Fedora.

Tldr: I suggest investing the time to do the arch install on your side machine just as a learning experience, particularly by hand and without the script. It will be invaluable to you not just as a Linux user but as a computer user. Even if you end up on another OS you'll be more capable and comfortable with the terminal. I really can't emphasize how useful that will be and what doors it may unlock for you.

Small example is all the poorly written yet functional bash scripts I write for myself. How I used wget -r to scrape my university's website and made a database of old solutions to homework and exams for myself.