Omarchy 4.0 "Quattro"

Omarchy is an opinionated Arch-based distribution built around Hyprland, created by David Heinemeier Hansson. Version 4.0 “Quattro” replaced the entire desktop shell with a Quickshell-based implementation, which we covered when it shipped.

What Omarchy actually is

Omarchy is not a distribution in the sense of maintaining its own package repositories. It is Arch with an extremely specific configuration applied: Hyprland as the compositor, a curated set of tools, consistent theming, and sensible keybindings that work out of the box.

The value proposition is time. Building a comfortable Hyprland setup from scratch is genuinely a weekend of work, most of which is spent discovering which of eight status bars and six application launchers you can live with. Omarchy makes those decisions for you and makes them coherently.

The cost is that they are someone else’s decisions. If you disagree with the opinions, you will spend as long undoing them as you would have spent building your own.

The 4.0 shell rewrite

Quattro replaced the shell with a Quickshell implementation, which is the biggest change in the project’s history. Quickshell is a QtQuick-based framework for building Wayland desktop components, and moving to it consolidates what were previously several independent tools into one coherent, scriptable shell.

The release also brought faster installs and dual-boot support, the latter being an obvious requirement for anyone trying Omarchy on a machine they also use for something else.

The foundation

Shortly after 4.0, the Omacom Foundation launched with $8 million from eight technology figures, established to hold the Omarchy trademarks and fund the upstream projects it depends on. The first beneficiary is Hyprland’s Vaxry, who received a three-year sponsorship to work on the compositor full-time.

That is worth knowing if you are evaluating Omarchy for the long term. A distribution with a funded foundation behind it and a paid upstream maintainer is a different proposition than a personal project.

Who it suits

Developers who want a tiling Wayland setup and would rather start from a working configuration than a blank one. It assumes comfort with Arch, since underneath the configuration it is Arch, and problems get solved with pacman and the Arch wiki.

It is not a beginner distribution, regardless of how polished the installer is.

Verify Your Download

Checksums are published alongside the ISO on the official site.