Installing and updating Omarchy from mainland China is about to get a lot faster. Omarchy Central reports that a pull request by @emirb, merged into the quattro branch on October 22, makes the next version download its packages from China mirrors on installs in China.
The numbers
- From 20 Globalping probes in mainland China, pkgs.omarchy.org answered in 909 ms at the median and 1,440 ms at worst.
- Its China replica, pkgs.omarchy.cn, answered in 364 ms and 1,181 ms.
How it works
- A small region marker,
/etc/omarchy/region, holdscnor is absent for the rest of the world. It’s read as plain data, never sourced. - With the marker, the channel’s Arch mirror leads with its China replica and the [omarchy] repository uses pkgs.omarchy.cn. The .org servers stay in the list as fallback.
- According to the PR, the China mirrors serve the same signed packages as .org, so no new repository or key is added.
- A new
omarchy-apply-pacmancommand renders pacman.conf and the mirrorlist from the channel templates plus the machine’s regional additions. - Outside China nothing changes. Without the marker the rendered files are the channel templates byte for byte. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan belong to no region, and a test keeps it that way.
Still to come
- This is the first part of a larger PR (#13690) that was split up so it could be reviewed on its own. ARM platforms keep their own templates for now, and region switching, developer tool registries and China preinstalls will follow separately.
- Picking the region at install time depends on omarchy-iso PR #241, which is still open. It would derive the region from the timezone you already pick, so Asia/Shanghai maps to cn.
My take
This is the kind of quiet infrastructure work that makes a distro feel global. Faster mirrors, same signatures, safe fallbacks, and no change for everybody else. Good call.
Update (Oct 25): A Full Omarchy China Edition Is Coming
After meeting the Alibaba Cloud team in Hangzhou, DHH posted on X on October 24 that they’ll work together on “making the Omarchy China version perfect,” with three promises: “No VPN necessary, all the major Chinese apps preinstalled, dedicated ISO.” Omarchy Central notes there’s no date, no version and no app list yet.
- Today, iso.omarchy.cn mirrors the official omarchy-4.0.6 ISO unchanged, and says it’s “not a separate China build.” omarchy-site PR #598 (merged Oct 22) points omarchy.cn’s download links at that mirror.
- The mirror PR above already said China preinstalls would follow as separate PRs, which lines up with DHH’s apps promise.
- Open question: omarchy-iso PR #241 goes the other way, “one ISO for every region.” How that fits a dedicated ISO isn’t explained yet.
- Alibaba Cloud joined as a Founding Corporate Patron on September 22, pledging $1 million a year for three years.
Have a blessed day! And Happy Hacking!
