This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Pepe
For a long time, I’ve been curious about trying something new in the Linux world, specifically, a distribution built on top of Arch. While I’ve always appreciated the stability and familiarity of Ubuntu, the idea of a more minimal, rolling release system kept pulling me in. That’s how I ended up testing Omarchy Linux, a lightweight Arch-based distribution designed to offer a clean, modern, and highly customizable environment.
For my testing purposes, I am using one of my old laptops – Asus Zenbook UX305L.
CPU: Intel Core i5-5200U
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5500.
Memory: 8 GB DDR3 RAM.
Storage: 128 GB SSD.
Connectivity: Wi-Fi AC, Bluetooth, USB 3.0 and LAN.
What Is Omarchy Linux?
Omarchy Linux is an Arch-based distro that focuses on simplicity, performance, and a smooth user experience. It comes preconfigured with Hyprland, a dynamic and eye-catching Wayland compositor known for its animations, tiling capabilities, and focus on modern hardware acceleration. The distro aims to deliver a polished setup out of the box while still keeping the Arch philosophy—lightweight, cutting-edge, and under your control.
Downloading the ISO & Creating a Bootable USB
Getting started with Omarchy Linux was simple. I downloaded the latest ISO directly from the official project page, which provides a clean and compact image ready for installation.
To create a bootable USB, I used BalenaEtcher, a reliable cross-platform tool that makes flashing ISO files effortless. After selecting the Omarchy ISO, choosing my USB drive, and hitting Flash, the process completed within minutes.
With the bootable USB ready, I rebooted my machine, selected the stick from the boot menu, and was prepared to start the installation.
A Simple and Intuitive Installation
One pleasant surprise was the installation process. Unlike traditional Arch, where you manually configure almost everything, Omarchy Linux provides an intuitive and guided installer. It’s straightforward enough for intermediate Linux users, yet flexible enough to customize partitions or choose specific components. Everything—from disk setup to user creation—felt smooth and fast.
Within minutes, the system was ready to boot into the Hyprland desktop environment.
First Boot & My Experience With Hyprland
The first login into Hyprland was impressive. The animations felt fluid, the tiling behaviour was responsive, and the overall interface looked clean without being cluttered. Hyprland gives you a sense of control and minimalism, but with just enough eye candy to make everything feel modern.
Coming from Ubuntu’s GNOME environment, the transition definitely required adjusting, especially with the floating-vs-tiling dynamics. But after a few minutes of exploring, the workflow quickly became enjoyable—and surprisingly efficient.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Hyprland relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, which is one of its biggest strengths. After the first startup of Omarchy you will get a hint for the most useful shortcuts, like entering the control menu and application launcher. Here is the list of some of them, which might help you, when you are jumping from different desktop environments as I did.
Windows + K – keyboard bindings
Windows + Space – Application Launcher
Windows + Return – Open default Terminal
Windows + W – close the active window
Super + 1/2/3/4 – Jump to specific workspace
Shift + Super + 1/2/3/4 – Move window to workspace
more shortcuts you can find here.
Mastering these shortcuts makes the environment extremely fast to navigate and much more efficient than a traditional mouse-driven workflow. It is also a game-changer in productivity, at least I felt it.
Final Thoughts
Testing Omarchy Linux has been a refreshing experience. The combination of an easy installation, a modern Wayland environment, and the flexibility of an Arch base makes it a compelling option for daily use, especially for Devs. I genuinely enjoyed working with Hyprland and the overall lightweight feel of the system.
Omarchy comes with a well-thought-out selection of predefined software and dotfiles, giving the system a ready-to-use feel right after installation. The curated setup saves a lot of initial configuration time and provides a clean starting point for productivity. Installing or removing software is extremely easy. Pacman and the AUR offer a huge library of tools, all accessible through a fast and consistent workflow.
I’m planning to spend more time working in Omarchy Linux to see how it performs for real-world DevOps tasks. And who knows if things continue going this well, I might even consider a full switch from Ubuntu in the near future.
When it comes to my Windows development environment, though, I’ll continue using Ubuntu as my WSL distro. Ubuntu remains the most stable and well-supported option in the WSL ecosystem, especially for DevOps-focused tasks where reliability and predictable updates matter.
See ya and Happy coding!
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Pepe