Omarchy should not matter. But sadly it does. As a power grab.

If you don’t know what Omarchy is here’s the short summary. David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of RubyOnRails, owner of a software business and millionaire, decided a few months ago to go all in on Linux and – because that’s just his MO – thought that turning his setup into a project made sense. Omarchy is just that: A pretty standard Arch Linux distribution with a handful of configuration files, that Heinemeier Hansson (or DHH as he is often called) wrote, or vibed or whatever. There is nothing wrong with this, custom, opinionated special purpose distributions have been part of the Linux culture for a long time and provide a lot of value and experimentation that sometimes even flows back to the original project. In a way Ubuntu Linux is just that to the basis Debian.

There’s also nothing wrong in more opinionated software – quite the opposite. I do think that RubyOnRails and similar frameworks gained traction especially because they do have a clear idea of how they see the respective problem domain. There’s even the statement “There should be one – and preferably only one – obvious way to do it” in the Zen of Python. Having a strong point of view is not a bad thing in software or in general. The problem is the kind of points of view DHH has.

I don’t want to go into all the gritty details here, Brennan Kenneth Brown did a great job with their article “Normalized Fascism in Open Source: $12 Million Given to DHH“, but here’s the short version. DHH is a racist and a fascist. He recently wrote articles on how there are [Content Warning: massive racism] too many brown people in London these days. In July he wrote an [Content Warning: Racism, anti-romanism] article comparing Roma communities (using a slur for them) to “wolves” that should be “shot”. His X account is also know to be “edgy” in a similar way. A few days ago he posted sort of a manifesto for his set of config files:

There’s even a longer version on the website. Even without a strong background in antifascist literature or history this reads like a fascist creed. About unity and identity. About “holding the line” (against codes of conduct and the rights of marginalized people as the website explains). About how there always needs to be a strong leader who makes the decisions. Given DHH’s other writing this is not a misguided joke, this is how he thinks about the world.

I began this text writing “Omarchy should not matter” but I have not explained why it does. It’s surely not about user numbers (it’s a clunky distro aimed at people who love to cosplay hackers). But it is about power.

DHH has used his connection to CEO’s of tech corporations and his position as influencer to collect up to now above 18 million dollars of funding for Omarchy. He uses that money not for himself (he has enough of that) but to fund certain pieces of Software he uses in his distribution. Like for example the window manager hyprland whose main developer the Omarchy money now funds. What is “Vaxry” known for outside of a niche window manager? He runs a community based around LGBTQ discrimination and participates in that (see the short summary on Drew DeVault’s “Weird Little Guys of FOSS” list). His bigotry is so consistent that he was banned from participating in the Freedesktop.org community where all the other developers of window managers and the free software desktop stack collaborate. And it was long before DHH funded him.

One could see a world where a CEO using his connections to drum up some funding for free software projects would be a good thing. But that’s not the world we live in I am afraid. DHH got 3 million USD from Digital Ocean (a cloud provider) for Omarchy. Basically at the same time where Digital Ocean cancelled their support of Flathub and GNOME that amounted to a value of 50 USD per month.

DHH is using his position and his influence to accumulate donations that he then can distribute to projects that align with his fascist worldview and ambitions. And in a time where many important projects and infrastructures are strapped for cash running just on the goodwill of a handful of people that is increasingly dangerous. Not because its corporate money – a lot of funding for open source comes from corporations, they are after all who are sucking up all the surplus from people’s labor. It’s because this amount of money gives him power.

The Omarchy foundation will be where projects in desperate need of funding will be pointed. And will a project focused on human rights and social justice get funding from our fascist overlord? What kind of pressure can that exert on projects who have to decide to either die due to lack of funding or kill their code of conduct?

An open fascist is building one of the bigger sources of funding for open source fully under his individual control and sucks up a lot of money that otherwise might have gone to liberatory projects. Community projects. Antifascist projects.

And that is why Omarchy matters. Sadly. Not because of its technical merit (even though those fascists love to use the “merit” argument to fight human rights) but because of its leader, his connections and his ability to accumulate financial power. Without anyone in that ecosystem saying anything about how that leader operates and talks. And you might know the saying: If there’s a Nazi and 10 folks sitting together at a table and nobody says and does anything? There’s 11 Nazis at that table.

Omarchy got a lot of recognition recently. Not only by corporate donors but by Youtubers and other tech influencers who kept praising it and nudged people (who might not know about DHH’s exploits) towards testing it. To become “a hardcore linux user/dev” or whatever other chauvinist argument they made. This makes it dangerous.

Running Omarchy means contributing to this dynamic. It means willingly integrating oneself into a fascist community. Legitimizing it. Supporting it. Omarchy is a fascist project that normalizes fascist thinking for everyone entering that community (even unknowingly). The baseline has to be not to use that system. And as people who believe in human rights and dignity, in community and a tech world that can be better we need to oppose Omarchy. Need to make sure it gets no seat at any table. Support projects who actively refuse to collaborate. Support projects who care about human rights and flourishing. And do not do business with the companies who willingly support fascists.

Siamo tutti antifascisti!

(Share this message about Omarchy [or some other similar post] around in the tech circles you frequent. Tell people about the background of this hyped Linux distribution and its fascist leader. Quit your 1password or Digital Ocean accounts and mention that it is because the support fascists.)

Open Slopware - Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives.

The intention of this list is to raise awareness of AI/LLM usage in popular open-source software. Provided below is an informed set of AI-free alternatives for users and developers to consider should their ethical boundaries be crossed or tolerance for risk be exceeded. This list is not a resource to be used for the harassment of other open-source developers. If you wish to advocate for the cessation of use and/or removal of AI-generated code from another project, we ask that it be done respectfully and constructively (and do not mention this list).

For more information on why we think this list matters, please see Why not LLMs?.

Want to add, update, or remove a project listed below? Check out our Contributing Doc.

See a project on here that you love, and wish wasn't on here? Check out our No AI Request Template.

Ready to fork a project to introduce a No AI policy? Check out our How to Slop Free Fork Guide.

Any other questions? Please check out our FAQ, and if your question isn't answered there, please feel free to start a Discussion.

A great video essay linking generative AI and technocratic fascism.

We cover the recent NVIDIA x Palantir partnership wherein NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that NVIDIA would "accelerate everything that Palantir" does. In this video, we mostly define WTF Palantir is, but also expand on other topics of AI facial recognition technology, so-called "pre-crime" arrests facilitated by other technologies and agencies, and how NVIDIA feels like it's becoming, effectively, a defense contractor. Instead of 'normal' weapons, though, NVIDIA is selling AI technology to be turned into weapons.

Mozilla Corporation has named its new CEO in replacing interim CEO Laura Chambers.

Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has been named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was SVP of Firefox from 2004 to July 2005 and then from July until now was the GM of Firefox at Mozilla. He's written a public message today in his first day serving as the new chief executive for Mozilla.

"People want software that is fast, modern, but also honest about what it does. They want to understand what’s happening and to have real choices.

Mozilla and Firefox can be that choice.

Few companies share our strengths. People trust our brand. Firefox brings us global reach. Our teams know how to build reliable, independent software at scale, and our business model puts the user first.

As Mozilla moves forward, we will focus on becoming the trusted software company. This is not a slogan. It is a direction that guides how we build and how we grow. It means three things.

First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.

Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.

Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions."

AI is mentioned throughout Enzor-DeMeo's announcement post on the Mozilla Blog.

US politics has been pretty fascist lately. The state is filling up concentration camps, engaging in mass state violence against people on the basis of racialized traits, deporting them to random countries without any respect for habeas corpus, exerting state pressure on the free press to censor speech critical of the current administration, and Trump is openly floating the idea of an unconstitutional third term.

Fascism is clearly on the rise, and they’re winning more and more power. None of this is far removed from us in the FOSS community – there are a number of fascists working in FOSS, same as the rest of society. I don’t call them fascists baselessly – someone who speaks out in support of and expresses solidarity with fascists, or who uses fascists dog-whistles or promotes fascist ideology and talking points, or boosts fascist conspiracy theories – well, they’re a fascist.

If one consistently speaks in support of a certain political position and against the opponents of that position then it is correct to identify them with this political position. Facts, as it were, don’t care about feelings, namely the feelings that get hurt when someone is called a fascist. Fascists naturally do not want to be identified as such and will reject the label, but we shouldn’t take their word for it. People should be much more afraid of being called out as fascist than they are afraid of calling someone a fascist. If someone doesn’t want to be called a fascist, they shouldn’t act like one.

It’s in this disturbing political context that I saw an odd post from the Cloudflare blog pop up in my circles this week: Supporting the future of the open web: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy. Based on Ladybird’s sponsorship terms we can assume that these projects received on the order of $100,000 USD from Cloudflare. I find this odd for a few reasons, in particular because one thing that I know these two projects have in common is that they are both run by fascists.

Even at face value this is an unusual pair of projects to fund. I’m all for FOSS projects getting funded, of course, and I won’t complain about a project’s funding on the solitary basis that it’s an odd choice. I will point out that these are odd choices, though, especially Omarchy...

After the first round of community feedback, we’re happy to share the second release candidate for GIMP 3.0! People gave us really helpful feedback from the first release candidate and we were able to fix a lot of bugs.

Fixed a bug that could cause suspend/resume to fail when using the NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations option: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/472 Fixed a bug that caused the cursor image to be truncated on Gamescope: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/1099 Re-enabled GLX_EXT_buffer_age on Xwayland. This extension had been previously disabled on Xwayland due to a bug which is now fixed. Added support for mmap of exported DMA-BUF objects. Reduced some cases of stutter with OpenGL syncing to vblank while using GSP firmware. Fixed a regression that could cause some applications to exit due to resource exhaustion on some GPUs while using GSP firmware. Added several new per-plane and per-CRTC vendor-specific properties to nvidia-drm. These properties may be used by Wayland compositors to program the GPU's color pipeline for HDR hardware acceleration. Introduced a driver optimization to mitigate the performance loss from the 'd3d9.floatEmulation' option in DXVK. Fixed a bug that caused FarCry 5 running through DXVK to display a black screen. Updated the framelock settings page of the nvidia-settings control panel to use the GTK3 theme text color rather than defaulting to white for the text color, improving legibility with some themes. Fixed some performance regressions that were observed with Vkd3d 2.9. Fixed a bug that could cause flickering in some applications when using Unified Back Buffer (UBB). Fixed a bug which could cause incorrect and/or washed out colors to be displayed with HDR scanout: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482780 Implemented support for VK_EXT_depth_clamp_control. Fixed a bug which could cause applications using GBM to crash when running with nvidia-drm.modeset=0. Fixed a bug that could cause kernel crashes upon attempting KMS operations through DRM when nvidia_drm was loaded with modeset=0.

The ESA, which represents several major gaming companies, has shared an updated list of notorious piracy threats with the U.S. Government. One of the notable newcomers is FitGirl-Repacks, which has been a dominant player in the game piracy landscape for years. Meanwhile, ESA's report no longer mentions malware, cryptocurrencies, or Scene release groups, which were previously seen as 'growing trends'.

You can try out the Proton-Cachyos with frame gen package if you're on arch-based systems with pacman -U archive.cachyos.org/proton/proton-cachyos-1:9.0.20240928-1-x86_64_v3.pkg.tar.zst

or you can download custom tkg-proton with frame generation from mediafire.com/file/lv7d8jci0gyf6z0/proton_dlssfg.tar.zst/file and put into your ~/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/

We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.

This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed-up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors. We are incredibly grateful for Valve to make this possible and for their explicit commitment to help and support Arch Linux.

These projects will follow our usual development and consensus-building workflows. [RFCs] will be created for any wide-ranging changes. Discussions on this mailing list as well as issue, milestone and epic planning in our GitLab will provide transparency and insight into the work. We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on this mailing list as work progresses.