Doctrine
There are a million different Linux distributions out there. Each with their own mission, vision, and principles. Same too with the Omacom remixes and distributions. There's not a mission here to chase a mass-market. Omacom is intended for developers, designers, and the technically-inclined. Here are our guiding principles.
Defaults over decisions
It's literally in the name! Omakase! And that means while substitutions are always welcome, I'll first present you with an excellent set of defaults that were all curated together. You should have to make no decisions at all on your first go with Omacom wares. There'll always be a default, it'll always be considered.
Great defaults actually help you make better decisions. Because you'll always have a default to weigh your decision against. Is this actually better? If so, awesome. You're training your own taste and opinions against a known benchmark.
Ultimately, though, defaults are just that. A great place to start. Maybe that's all you need, and then you're done. But it can also be an invitation to dive deeper, develop your own eye, learn all the components, and come up with something personal.
Tasteful but not over-the-top
Aesthetics matter. I know that parts of the Linux culture traditionally have always looked with great skepticism at anything that looks too flashy or fancy. To the point that design is occasionally denigrated as unimportant or even in opposition to substance. I consider this to be total nonsense. The pursuit of beauty is a core human yearning. We should embrace the chase with enthusiasm.
But I know how the skepticism arose. There are plenty of software products that favor aesthetics to the point of distraction or at the expense of functionality. That's not the mission here. Aesthetics are important, but as an aid toward a beautiful, cohesive, and productive system. Not as an enemy of it.
Likewise, the unbridled creativity that flows through deeply personal, over-the-top setups, like the bulk of those you can find on r/unixporn, isn't the target either.
Omacom aims to be tastefully cohesive and casually cool. We don't need to try too hard, but try we should.
Keyboard before mouse
The mouse is a fantastic invention. It allowed far more people to become familiar and productive with their computer because it favors discovery over productivity. Learnability is high when you can just browse through menus, point at what you want, and click to get there. Wonderful.
But the mouse is also slow. Navigating your desktop by dragging windows around is never going to compete with the speed of keyboard navigation. Hotkeys take the hyper drive to their destination. The price comes in diminished discovery and decreased familiarity. You actually have to learn how THIS system works.
That's a price we're willing to pay with Omacom. Everything that can be done by the keyboard should be done by the keyboard. It's OK that it'll take longer to learn the system. It's OK to have a manual. It's OK to need to look up hotkeys until they become second nature.
Pragmatic commercialism
Omacom is based on a lot of Free Software™ and a lot of open source software, but it is in no way ideological about it. Using Linux, Arch, Ubuntu, Hyprland, and GNOME as the base ingredients allowed me to build systems that are free from excessive monopoly power, but on top of those systems, I celebrate the free market of commercial software with gusto.
This means all Omacom systems include commercial tools when they're the best option. From Spotify to 1password, from Typora to Zoom. It's all welcome. Right next to Pinta, Kdenlive, OBS Studio, and the rest of the open source options.
Omacom will always be open to business. Business users, business software, business involvement.
Newer isn't better, better is better
There's a lot of churn in computing. Hot trends come, hot trends go. Some times what's hot is hot because it's really better. Other times it's just hot because it is new. It's actually hard to tell the difference until you really give it a try.
It's easy to become a curmudgeon, never willing to try The New Thing, because you've become so jaded by things that were hot but not better in the past. I never want to become that person. Technology is simply more fun when you're optimistic about the idea that tomorrow's tools could be better than what we have today.
At the same time, I remember an endless parade of the NEW-NEW failing at ultimately being better than what it sought to replace. So like I don't want to become a curmudgeon, I also don't want to become gullible.
Omacom is going to ship what works, what's better. If that's a tool that's been around for twenty years, then that's what'll be in the box. If it's something that just came out last week, that's fine too.
Let Linux be Linux
In search of acceptance, many Linux distributions and desktop environments have chased familiarity with Windows and Mac designs to a fault. Maybe this made sense at some point, maybe it still makes sense for some markets, but we also need Linux systems that are unapologetically Linux. In their design, in their functionality.
That's what Omacom strives to be: Uniquely Linux. Embracing the terminal as not just the command line for an entire system, but as an application platform in and of itself. TUIs — terminal user interfaces — are a great example of this. Are they a little nerdy? Yes, that's the fun! That's the point! That's the productivity! When you've learned your way around LazyGit, you're not going to look for a GUI to wrangle your git commits again.
The same is true for the overall desktop experience. Omarchy embraces hard corners, 80s retro colors, and monospace fonts. It's not trying to ape the latest Liquid Glass trends from Apple, it's not trying to mirror the Windows task bar. It's trying to be confident in its own aesthetic and usability. So shall all of Omacom strive.