90% of what you need to survive in Omarchy as a Ubuntu/KDE refugee

Omarchy is an opinionated Linux setup created by DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson, the guy behind Ruby on Rails) and released in 2024. It's built on top of Arch Linux, using Hyprland as the window manager. But the story goes a little further back: Omarchy is the spiritual successor to Omakub, DHH's earlier opinionated setup for Ubuntu. When he decided Ubuntu was too slow and too bloated, he moved everything to Arch and rebuilt it from scratch.

Omarchy is to Arch Linux what Laravel is to PHP. Arch does the heavy lifting, but Omarchy makes the decisions so you don't have to spend three weekends configuring dotfiles before you can open a browser.

Why Omarchy?

Arch Linux has always been the enthusiast's choice: fast, minimal, rolling release, no cruft. The problem is that bootstrapping a usable Arch desktop from scratch is a multi-day ritual involving the wiki, prayers, and at least one failed boot. Omarchy solves this by giving you a single ISO that drops you into a fully configured Hyprland environment the moment installation finishes. No setup ceremony. No dotfile archaeology. Just a working system with sensible defaults.

What has kept the Ubuntu/KDE crowd away from Arch is not the difficulty of running it: it's the difficulty of starting. Omarchy removes that barrier entirely.

Getting Started

Unlike Ubuntu, you don't install Omarchy inside an existing OS. You boot from an ISO and it takes over the drive. Download the ISO from omarchy.org, flash it to a USB:

• balenaEtcher: if you're still on Mac or Windows
• caligula: if you're on Linux

Boot from the USB, answer a few questions (username, keyboard layout, drive selection), and you're done in under five minutes. Two things that will get you before you even start:

• Disable Secure Boot and TPM in BIOS. These are Windows-only schemes. Omarchy will refuse to install with them on.
• Use a wired keyboard or 2.4GHz dongle. The full-disk encryption prompt fires before Bluetooth is alive. A Bluetooth keyboard means you're locked out at boot, every boot.

pacman instead of apt

The first wall you hit coming from Ubuntu is the package manager. Forget apt. Arch uses pacman. The flags look different but the logic is the same:

# Install
sudo pacman -S nginx

# Remove (like apt remove)
sudo pacman -R nginx 

# Remove + config files (like apt purge)
sudo pacman -Rn nginx 

# Remove + unused dependencies (like apt autoremove)
sudo pacman -Rns nginx 

# Update everything (apt update + apt upgrade combined)
sudo pacman -Syu 

# Search 
pacman -Ss nginx 

# Info about a package 
pacman -Si nginx

The AUR: what PPAs should have been

The AUR (Arch User Repository) is a community repo of build scripts for packages not in the official repos. Every obscure tool that needed a PPA on Ubuntu: here it's just on the AUR. You don't use pacman for AUR packages directly. You use an AUR helper. Omarchy ships with yay.

Use yay exactly like pacman: it checks both official repos and AUR automatically:

# Install (checks official repos first, then AUR)
yay -S google-chrome

# Update everything including AUR packages
yay -Syu 

# Remove 
yay -Rns google-chrome

Do not run yay with sudo. AUR packages compile from source under your own user. yay asks for sudo only when it actually needs it. Running it as root will break things.

Updating Omarchy

Omarchy has its own update command that wraps pacman -Syu and also applies any configuration migrations DHH pushed upstream:

omarchy-update

Run this regularly. On a rolling release, skipping updates for weeks is how things break. Unlike Ubuntu's twice-a-year LTS cycle, Arch packages update continuously.

WTF is Hyprland

Hyprland is a tiling Wayland compositor. There is no desktop. No wallpaper with icons on it. No right-click menu. Every window that opens gets placed and sized automatically. You have numbered workspaces. You navigate everything with Super (your Windows key). The mouse works, but the whole system is designed so your hands never leave the keyboard.

When you boot Omarchy for the first time and see only a top bar and nothing else, that is correct. You are not missing something. Hit Super + Return to open a terminal. That's your entry point into everything.

Essential shortcuts: coming from Ubuntu/KDE

What you want	Ubuntu/KDE	Omarchy/Hyprland
App launcher	Super or app grid	Super + Space
Open terminal	Ctrl+Alt+T	Super + Return
Open browser	click taskbar	Super + Shift + Return
Close window	Alt+F4	Super + W or Super + Q
Switch workspace	Ctrl+Alt+Arrow	Super + 1/2/3/4
Move window to workspace	drag to preview	Super + Shift + 1/2/3/4
Focus between windows	Alt+Tab	Super + Arrow
Full screen	F11 or Super+Up	Super + F
Lock screen	Super+L	Super + Ctrl + L
File manager	click folder icon	Super + Shift + F
Screenshot	PrtScr	Print Screen
System monitor	right-click desktop	Super + Ctrl + T
Power/restart menu	top-right corner	Super + Escape
See all shortcuts	Settings → Keyboard	Super + K

Tiling: stop fighting it

When you open two windows they split the screen. This is the point. Here's what you actually need:

Super + J # toggle horizontal vs vertical split 
Super + T # toggle window between tiled and floating 
Super + L # toggle workspace between dwindle and scrolling layout 
Super + Arrow # move focus to window in that direction 
Super + Shift + Arrow # swap current window with its neighbor 
Super + Left Mouse # drag a floating window 
Super + Right Mouse # resize any window

If ten windows on one workspace are becoming too small, move some to another workspace with Super + Shift + 2, or hit Super + L to switch to the scrolling layout where windows line up horizontally past the screen edge like a horizontal scroll.

Copy/paste: finally fixed

Ubuntu made you use Ctrl+C/V in apps and Ctrl+Shift+C/V in the terminal. Omarchy unifies this:

Super + C # copy (works everywhere including terminal)
Super + V # paste (works everywhere)
Super + Ctrl+V # clipboard history - pick from previous copies

Where is the config?

On KDE you had Settings GUIs. Here almost everything is a text file under ~/.config/. The ones you'll actually touch:

~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua # add or change keyboard shortcuts ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua # layout defaults, gaps, default layout ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf # environment variables, autostart apps

After editing any Hyprland config, reload without logging out:

hyprctl reload

More Resources

• omarchy.org/manual: the official manual, thorough and well-written
• wiki.archlinux.org: the Arch wiki, if something breaks, start here
• Omarchy Discord: the #omarchy-help channel

Once you get used to Omarchy, navigating a desktop by mouse will feel like you're dragging furniture around a room instead of just walking through it. The first week is adjustment. The second week is muscle memory. The third week you start resenting every other OS you touch.

One more thing:

I made a plugin for Omarchy to manage your keyboard layouts very easily. It's called Omalang. If you speak any language other than English, you're gonna need it. Check it out and let me know what you think: https://github.com/arazgray/omalang