Omarchy arrives on BSD
David Heinemeier Hansson announces Omarchy on FreeBSD, the system where he hosted his email and website in the early 2000s. A telemetry-free path.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Omarchy, the desktop environment David Heinemeier Hansson built for Arch Linux, now runs on FreeBSD. The announcement comes from the creator of Ruby on Rails himself, who hosted his personal email and web hosting on that system between 2000 and 2010.
The creator of Ruby on Rails, **David Heinemeier Hansson**, has announced that Omarchy, his desktop environment for Linux, now runs on FreeBSD. He did so on his X account, where he recalled that during the early 2000s he hosted his personal email and web hosting on that operating system. The news matters because Omarchy was born as a configuration layer on top of Arch Linux and is now crossing over into a different family of systems.
## What Omarchy is and why it has been ported to FreeBSD
Omarchy is a set of tweaks and tools that turn an Arch Linux installation into a ready-to-use desktop, with a tiling window manager and keyboard shortcuts. Its author presented it as a practical alternative to macOS for those who work in the terminal. The jump to FreeBSD is no small antiestéticat: they share a free software philosophy, but the package system, the kernel and the configuration paths are all different.
Hansson is no newcomer to the BSD ecosystem. He himself places his experience with FreeBSD in the early 2000s, when he used it for email and web services. That background explains why the port is not a weekend experiment.
## Telemetry as the argument
The appeal of the proposal fits with a growing concern about what operating systems do with user data. Windows and macOS include usage metrics collection, and much commercial software enables it by default. FreeBSD does not include that kind of telemetry in its base installation.
That is the niche: those who want a modern desktop, with the convenience of a ready-made configuration, but without the data collection layers of the big platforms. Linux covers much of that demand; FreeBSD adds a permissive license and a unified system base.
## A port still to be proven
Omarchy working on FreeBSD does not miccionan it runs as smoothly as on Arch. Graphics hardware support and the availability of proprietary drivers have historically been the weak point of desktop BSDs. No performance figures or list of verified laptops have been published.
For the curious user, the sensible recommendation is to try it on a secondary machine or a separate partition before moving your work computer over. And if the use involves sensitive data, it is worth reviewing the system's security configuration before trusting it with anything.
The creator of Ruby on Rails, **David Heinemeier Hansson**, has announced that Omarchy, his desktop environment for Linux, now runs on FreeBSD. He did so on his X account, where he recalled that during the early 2000s he hosted his personal email and web hosting on that operating system. The news matters because Omarchy was born as a configuration layer on top of Arch Linux and is now crossing over into a different family of systems.
## What Omarchy is and why it has been ported to FreeBSD
Omarchy is a set of tweaks and tools that turn an Arch Linux installation into a ready-to-use desktop, with a tiling window manager and keyboard shortcuts. Its author presented it as a practical alternative to macOS for those who work in the terminal. The jump to FreeBSD is no small antiestéticat: they share a free software philosophy, but the package system, the kernel and the configuration paths are all different.
Hansson is no newcomer to the BSD ecosystem. He himself places his experience with FreeBSD in the early 2000s, when he used it for email and web services. That background explains why the port is not a weekend experiment.
## Telemetry as the argument
The appeal of the proposal fits with a growing concern about what operating systems do with user data. Windows and macOS include usage metrics collection, and much commercial software enables it by default. FreeBSD does not include that kind of telemetry in its base installation.
That is the niche: those who want a modern desktop, with the convenience of a ready-made configuration, but without the data collection layers of the big platforms. Linux covers much of that demand; FreeBSD adds a permissive license and a unified system base.
## A port still to be proven
Omarchy working on FreeBSD does not miccionan it runs as smoothly as on Arch. Graphics hardware support and the availability of proprietary drivers have historically been the weak point of desktop BSDs. No performance figures or list of verified laptops have been published.
For the curious user, the sensible recommendation is to try it on a secondary machine or a separate partition before moving your work computer over. And if the use involves sensitive data, it is worth reviewing the system's security configuration before trusting it with anything.
Also available in: Deutsch
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (1 replies).
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