Daemonarchy: The Omarchy Desktop on FreeBSD
Daemonarchy 1.3.1, a FreeBSD-based desktop environment featuring DHH's Hyprland interface, has been released with improved hardware support and new installation options.
Daemonarchy 1.3.1, a FreeBSD-based desktop environment featuring DHH's Hyprland interface, has been released with improved hardware support and new installation options. The latest stable version, published October 25, 2026, brings significant enhancements including partition selection during installation and better MacBook Pro compatibility.
New Installation Options
The release introduces flexible installation methods, allowing users to install on a whole disk, selected GPT partition, or existing free space. This new partition selection capability, first introduced in version 1.1, provides greater flexibility for users with existing operating systems or data partitions.
The 2GB ISO image includes a welcome screen, keyboard configuration, account setup, hostname, and timezone questions similar to Omarchy's installer. Users can write the image to a USB stick using the 'dd' command and boot with Secure Boot disabled or follow the manual enrollment guide for verified boot.
Enhanced Hardware Support
Version 1.3.1 adds support for MacBookPro16,1 with Navi14 graphics, T2 keyboard and trackpad, and BCM4364 Wi-Fi with firmware acquired from Apple recovery media. However, the MSI Raider 18 HX AI A2XWIG still experiences resets during early kernel startup, indicating ongoing hardware compatibility work.
The MacBookPro16,1 passed pre-production checks by operator confirmation; an additional physical run of the final ISO was waived. The MSI Raider 18 HX still resets during early kernel startup.
FreeBSD Integration
Daemonarchy leverages FreeBSD's strengths including ZFS boot environments that allow system rollbacks, hourly and daily ZFS snapshots for file restoration, and lightweight FreeBSD containers called jails. The system also supports virtual machines through bhyve, FreeBSD's hypervisor, and provides system tracing capabilities via DTrace.
The desktop integrates FreeBSD's networking stack with Wi-Fi running through wpa_supplicant, sound through PipeWire, and Bluetooth through FreeBSD's native stack. Software installation can be managed through OctoPkg or pkg, with Chromium pre-installed by default.
Development Roadmap
Version 1.4.0 is currently in development, with ongoing work addressing remaining graphics, Bluetooth, enterprise Wi-Fi, installation and boot support gaps. The development team emphasizes physical hardware qualification over virtual machine testing, ensuring real-world compatibility before release.
The installer has been enhanced with a rescue menu for interrupted installations and remote debugging capabilities that survive reboots. For problematic hardware, developers can use a separate hardware bring-up trace image to diagnose startup issues.
Related
