Issue 2 · Sunday 27 September 2026 · 3 min read
Omarchy 4.0.4 boots its own kernel by default; Alibaba Cloud puts $3M behind the project
In this issue: Headline · Themes & Ricing · DHH & Direction · Community & Discourse · Worth Trying
Headline
Omarchy now ships its own Linux kernel — 4.0.4 makes it the default. The 4.0.4 release, out September 15, installs a purpose-built kernel called linux-omarchy instead of the stock Arch one. The team tunes it for desktop feel, gaming, snappier Btrfs operations and better power management, and it's based on the Linux 7.2 series with matching headers from Omarchy's own kernel source repo.
This is Omarchy stepping out from under stock Arch for the part of the system that touches everything: instead of patching around Arch's kernel choices, the distro now owns that layer. The release notes also list fixes for missing audio, dead touchpads, frozen displays and a webcam bug on Dell XPS machines. T2 Macs stay on the specialized linux-t2 kernel; everyone else gets linux-omarchy. Existing installs get it through Update > Omarchy, and there's a fresh install ISO if you're starting clean. Linuxiac
Themes & Ricing
omarchythemes.com is now the place to browse the theme catalogue. A directory site collecting themes for Omarchy in one place, each credited to its author, with filters for official themes plus dark and light variants. You'll find DHH's own Catppuccin, Everforest, Gruvbox, Kanagawa and Nord alongside community work like Batman, Deckard and Miasma by J. S. Brown. If you've been ricing by digging through GitHub repos, this puts the whole ecosystem on one page — a quick way to window-shop a new look before swapping your omarchy theme. The filters let you cut straight to official themes only, or split by dark and light, which is handy if you rotate with the time of day. omarchythemes.com
DHH & Direction
Alibaba Cloud becomes Omarchy's newest patron and takes the project to China. The Omacom Foundation announced on September 22 that Alibaba Cloud has signed on as its latest major sponsor, committing $3 million spread across three years — a pledge the same size as DigitalOcean's earlier one. With Meta Superintelligence Labs also on board, total backing now sits somewhere around $21.7 million. Money aside, the interesting part is what comes with it: Alibaba will help stand up Omarchy China — local CDN, hosting, website, meetups and community — and Omarchy is being lined up as the software side of Alibaba's upcoming Qwen Book machine, an ARM-first device (x86-compatible) built to run AI agents with the OS woven into the stack. That's Omarchy moving from a DHH side project to hardware-shipped territory. Alibaba Cloud CTO LI feifei is credited with brokering the deal, and the post notes a GOSIM conference talk plus an Omarchy meetup in Shenzhen on the way. omarchy.org
“Qwen Book aims to create a native AI agent computer.”
Community & Discourse
Fresh YouTube review makes the case for Omarchy as the Hyprland distro to beat. A new video review on YouTube walks through Omarchy under the title "The Best Hyprland Setup You Can Install Right Now" — the usual format of a hands-on tour of the install, defaults and workflow.
If you've been meaning to show a skeptical friend what your desktop actually is, this is the kind of link you forward instead of explaining Hyprland yourself. It's also a decent signal of how the project is landing with the broader Linux crowd. Worth a skim of the comments for how newcomers react to the opinionated defaults — usually the most honest review of all. YouTube
Worth Trying
Pull the new kernel onto your daily driver this week. Run the update from Update > Omarchy and check you're now on linux-omarchy rather than the stock Arch kernel after a reboot.
Since 4.0.4 makes the custom kernel the default, this is the one change this week you'll actually feel day to day — desktop responsiveness, gaming and Btrfs speedups are the claimed wins, and the audio/touchpad fixes alone make it worth the reboot. After rebooting, confirm the swap took effect before you delete anything; and if you're on a T2 Mac, expect to stay on linux-t2 — that's intentional, not a failed update. Linuxiac
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How this issue was made. Researched and written by an agent, produced on 27 September 2026, 07:01. 151 sources read, 0 unreachable. Every link above goes to the primary source. A person sets the brief and steers it; no person edited this text before it was sent.
Every issue
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- 18 OctQt 6.12 blacks out the menu, Glassy windows land, and Xournal++ makes way for Signed
- 11 OctNamespace's ARM runners, gliff in the base install, a Starship theme, and the edge repo hiccup
- 4 Oct$100k bug bounties on HackerOne, ThePrimeagen takes Agentic QA, and the linux-omarchy fallout worth checking
- 27 SepOmarchy 4.0.4 boots its own kernel by default; Alibaba Cloud puts $3M behind the project
- 23 SepOmarchy Weekly, Sept 23: a quiet changelog — a rootless sandbox for coding agents, macOS re-enabling a declined AI, and gzip as a language model