Can someone explain why I (a relatively Linux-naive engineer) would use Omarchy over Ubuntu or other popular distros? I'd like to take a look, but i'm having the hardest time understanding the value proposition.
In my opinion, you wouldnt. You might sooner pick up a distro like Arch (which is what Omarchy uses; it is not a distro in itself) if you want to imperatively manage everything, or NixOS with basic hyprland or Plasma or COSMIC config, etc., and then you can declaratively handle your dots and config.
Either of these routes would teach you more about Linux and give you the ability to build a simple desktop for your needs.
Your solution applies to people who want to tinker for the sake of tinkering. Not to the people/engineers who want to get stuff done, easily and efficiently.
For Arch, I would agree. Things break in mysterious ways and you may spend days tinkering to get a stable system. NixOS is entirely different. Once you get it working how you want, its set and forget. There are tons of simple set ups like this out there, often relying on some combo of WM + "Desktop shell" (noctalia, caelestia, etc) or simply using a fully baked DE. Using something like that cuts out the tinkering and lets you start on whatever work you are doing right away.
It’s Ruby on Rails in the world of distros. If you find other distros tasteless and unpolished, you may want to try Omarchy. At least that’s how I see it (I find most Linux distros and development frameworks tasteless and unpolished).
