{"id":8868,"date":"2026-10-26T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=8868"},"modified":"2026-10-26T10:35:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T17:35:00","slug":"bsd-users-can-now-enjoy-omarchy-flavor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=8868","title":{"rendered":"BSD Users Can Now Enjoy Omarchy Flavor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"daemonarchy<\/figure>\n

Jordan Hubbard started FreeBSD<\/a> in 1993 with two others, and he has now built Daemonarchy with help from OpenAI\u2019s GPT AI model. The name plays on Omarchy<\/a>, with the BSD daemon taking the place of Arch as the base.<\/p>\n

As for Omarchy, it has grown considerably<\/a> since we initially covered it as a one-command script<\/a> for Arch. It now installs from an ISO and has managed to pull in massive amounts of funding.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, Daemonarchy is only a few weeks old and already has several releases, with v1.3.1 being released a few hours ago.<\/p>\n

Why does this exist?<\/h2>\n
\"daemonarchy<\/figure>\n

A few people on LinkedIn<\/a> were pestering Jordan, saying FreeBSD should be as easy to set up and as pretty as Omarchy. That got him wondering, \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t that already exist?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

He was testing GPT Astra 6<\/a> at the time and used it to put the project together. The first pass took under two hours<\/strong>. That figure leaves out the Poudriere<\/a> builds used to validate it. GPT also picked the name for the project.<\/p>\n

The ports this distro needed went upstream to FreeBSD\u2019s ports tree for review. The same ports<\/a> also let you install Daemonarchy on top of an existing FreeBSD system.<\/p>\n

Jordan also credits the Wayland<\/em><\/strong>, Hyprland<\/em><\/strong>, and Arch Linux<\/em><\/strong> projects for the layers the desktop sits on.<\/p>\n

What does it offer?<\/h2>\n

The installer follows Omarchy\u2019s own, and it asks for the usual basics like keyboard layout, account details, hostname, and timezone.<\/p>\n

Daemonarchy can take over a whole disk or settle into a partition or free space you pick, with a minimum of 40 GB of storage required. A whole-disk install wipes the drive, while partition mode overwrites only the partition you select.<\/p>\n

Because the installer won\u2019t shrink existing filesystems, anyone dual-booting has to make room from the other OS first. Everything lands on ZFS with rollback support, and encryption is optional.<\/p>\n

The desktop is Omarchy itself<\/strong>, ported over with only the changes FreeBSD requires, and it runs on FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT<\/a>. Since CURRENT<\/code> moves daily, each image is pinned to one snapshot.<\/p>\n

A compatibility layer<\/a> maps pacman<\/code> to pkg<\/code>, backs the Wi-Fi panel with\u2063 wpa_supplicant<\/code> instead of NetworkManager<\/em>, and uses PipeWire to handle sound. Bluetooth also works for keyboards and mice via FreeBSD\u2019s Bluetooth stack.<\/p>\n

Apps come from FreeBSD\u2019s own packages, installed with OctoPkg<\/a> under Install > Packages<\/code> or with pkg<\/code>, and Chromium is preinstalled<\/strong>. Linux-only apps are being held back until specific versions have been tested under the Linuxulator<\/a>, FreeBSD\u2019s Linux compatibility layer.<\/p>\n

Jails<\/strong> give you isolated FreeBSD environments that carry their own packages, and bhyve<\/strong>, the built-in hypervisor, runs virtual machines for guests like Linux and Windows.<\/p>\n

And, if you run an upgrade through Omarchy\u2019s update, it applies pkg upgrade<\/code> to your applications and leaves the FreeBSD base and kernel alone. Daemonarchy\u2019s own packages come from a signed repository and fixes land between ISO releases.<\/p>\n

The wallpaper, wordmark, and login theme are the project’s own creations.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udce5 Get Daemonarchy<\/h2>\n

The latest 1.3.1 ISO<\/a> release is a little under 2 GiB. Put it on a USB drive using dd<\/code> or a live USB tool<\/a> like Fedora Media Writer<\/em>, then boot from that.<\/p>\n

Daemonarchy<\/a><\/div>\n

An internet connection is required<\/strong> during the installation while the installer downloads many packages as it progresses. The source code lives on GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jordan Hubbard started FreeBSD in 1993 with two others, and he has now built Daemonarchy with help from OpenAI\u2019s GPT AI model. The name plays on Omarchy, with the BSD…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}