Fascism Arch Linux gets more funding.
Omarchy has been on something of a roll now. Funding for its foundation has been climbing fast, from an $8 million launch to $10 million a few weeks later, and now crossing $13 million with the most recent pledge.
What’s drawn my attention are the first two Corporate Patrons, 1Password and 37signals, both of whom have decided to pitch $100,000 a year for the next three years. Now, 37signals I get; DHH is heavily involved there, but 1Password was a surprise entry.
Naturally, not everyone’s onboard with their pledge.
Signs of disagreement
This has not gone well with employees working at 1Password, with company leadership having to take certain damage control measures to assure their staff.
An internal Slack message has surfaced (courtesy of The Verge), which shows cofounder Roustem Karimov downplaying the criticism, telling team members that:
people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind.
However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked.
CEO David Faugno responded on a different note, telling employees the company doesn’t endorse DHH’s views, while also noting that Omarchy is the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password’s own users. Why the backlash?
DHH is known to be someone who firmly falls on the “right” side of the political spectrum, someone who doesn’t shy away from putting his opinions in public view.
He regularly posts blogs that show where he stands on certain societal issues, and some of his recent writeups are what’s fueling this particular backlash.
His recent July post, titled “Wolves, sheep, and gypsies,” compares Denmark’s wolf population with the Romani people camping in Copenhagen parks, where he argues: “When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them.”
Then there’s “As I remember London” from September 2025, where he laments about London losing its native Brit majority and a nod of approval for a Tommy Robinson march.
Of course, these aren’t the only factors behind his disapproval, but you get the gist of it, right?
Users could jump ship
If you search for the terms “1Password” and “Omarchy” right now, you are bound to run into the many comments made by disgruntled 1Password users on Reddit and Hacker News.
They are calling the choice tone-deaf, given how many smaller open source projects could’ve benefited from the money. Some are already jumping to alternatives like Bitwarden, while others suggest self-hosting Vaultwarden or going with KeePass and its forks instead.
I see the issue compounding too. Back in February, 1Password raised subscription prices, taking effect at renewals from March 27. Individual plans went up 33 percent from $35.88 to $47.88 a year, and family plans went up 20 percent from $59.88 to $71.88.
Its community forum already has a long thread full of longtime users saying they were leaving over it. If 1Password continues playing with its users’ trust like this, who knows what kind of exodus it will see next?



Somehow I keep seeing articles about how people use Omarchy or how some random rich person likes Omarchy or whatever and I haven’t met a single person who I’ve heard uses it. Does anyone actually use it?
It’s literally just Arch with a few dotfiles and Hyprland, and recently is getting LLM chatbot bits attached to it too (as if supporting a fascist isn’t worse enough for them)
DHH is actively promoting Omarchy as a “beginner distro” (it’s not, it’s Arch with a tiling WM) in order to drive more unsuspecting new users (who don’t know who this DHH guy is) and use it as a platform for his views and as a way to receive funding by equally horrible tech bros. I know a lot of creators have been showing off Omarchy and promoting it as a “Arch for newbies”, which is just misinformation I feel like. I don’t think Arch is the right call for most people, and actual Arch-based distros like EndeavourOS and CachyOS (hell, even SteamOS!) are better.
LOL a tiling WM for a “beginner distro”?
Arch for newbies would be something like SteamOS (a console-like experience), not something that presumably requires learning hotkeys to change which window you’re looking at. Sure, I like tiling WMs, but most people still right click to copy/paste.
Anyway, it just sounds like one of those rightwing grifts. Thanks for the context!
Hes promoting it as a starter distro for experienced developers not average users.
I don’t even know what it’s supposed to mean or do.
I like to think I’m pretty current on Linux news, but I’ve literally never heard of Omarchy until this week 🤷