{"slug": "ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro", "title": "Ikey Doherty vs Omarchy: Why He’s Building Barney Instead of Another Distro", "summary": "Ikey Doherty, creator of Solus and AerynOS, has come out of retirement to build Barney, a Rust-based tool for building Linux distros from source, in response to the $13 million in pledges behind DHH's Omarchy distro and DHH's comments about nomadic people. Doherty, an Irish Traveller, called the funding 'absurd' and DHH's remarks 'horrific', and he plans to demonstrate distro building from scratch in a YouTube series.", "body_md": "[Ikey Doherty](https://github.com/TravellingEngineer?ref=itsfoss.com) is out of retirement, and Omarchy's funding is why.\n\nIn a video posted on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwvZxlLCGk4&ref=itsfoss.com), the creator of [Solus](https://getsol.us/?ref=itsfoss.com) and [AerynOS](https://aerynos.com/?ref=itsfoss.com) called the money behind DHH's distro absurd and **promised to do it better with nothing**. His answer is **Barney**, a Rust-based tool for building Linux distros from source.\n\nOmarchy's [Omacom Foundation](https://itsfoss.com/news/omarchy-launches-omacom-foundation/) has already crossed $13 million in pledges since its August launch, when eight tech executives, including Michael Dell, put in a million each.\n\nThe run has drawn its share of pushback, most recently when [1Password pledged $300,000](https://itsfoss.com/news/1password-omarchy-pledge/) and its own employees objected. Ikey's video arrived a day after the foundation [announced $1.95 million in AI tokens](https://omarchy.org/news/2026/09/omacom-foundation-secures-tokens-from-leading-labs/?ref=itsfoss.com) from Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Fireworks.\n\n## Not a distro, but a stance\n\n[Barney](https://github.com/TravellingEngineer/barney?ref=itsfoss.com) is a tool meant to help you build Linux distros; the repo describes it as \"*yet another feckin' tool to build a Linux distro*\" and notes that delivering a distro is not the intended goal.\n\nIkey plans to show how distros get built instead of shipping what he calls a \"*wallpaper respin*\" via [a series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSYoICkBlTuA&ref=itsfoss.com) on his YouTube channel.\n\n**Everything gets built from source**, and the outputs are cached against what produced them. Change a dependency, and anything built on top of it gets rebuilt. Layouts stay stateless, a concept Doherty says he helped pioneer on Intel's Clear Linux team and later pushed in Solus and AerynOS (*formerly Serpent OS*).\n\nBuilds run in containers, and the results are stored by content, so identical files across packages only get stored once. The plan even includes rebuilding the toolchain from scratch.\n\nEverything is written in **Rust** and released under the **MPL-2.0 license**. The project's name itself is personal to him, as Barney is his son's name.\n\nWork on it has started already. The first episode of the series is live, titled \"*Episode 0: Getting Ready*.\" For access to the behind-the-scenes content, Ikey has set up [a Ko-fi page](https://ko-fi.com/TravellingEngineer?ref=itsfoss.com) where people can directly support him.\n\n## An Irish Traveller's reply\n\nDon't assume that this is something Ikey has no business talking about.\n\nOmarchy's creator, David Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH, had written a post comparing Denmark's wolf population with Romani people camping in Copenhagen parks.\n\nNaturally, Ikey, being an [Irish Traveller](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Irish-Travellers?ref=itsfoss.com), a group that has faced discrimination for generations, was bound to react. On [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ikeydoherty_triggered-out-of-retirement-by-the-absurdity-share-7501573439502147584-Cq40/?ref=itsfoss.com), sharing his video (*the one linked at the very beginning*), he called DHH's comments \"*horrific*\" and said the funding and the views together had dragged him back into the game.\n\nHis laptop buying plans [have changed too](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ikeydoherty_gonna-be-honest-i-wont-buy-another-dell-share-7501292162186211328-U87h/?ref=itsfoss.com). Michael Dell was among the launch backers, and Ikey has put the company on his avoid list, while also calling out Omarchy:\n\nGonna be honest I won’t buy another Dell laptop after Michael Dell showing support for DHH. Skipping the point of it being yet another wallpaper-respin distro.. I cannot possibly tolerate the comments made by DHH (on a number of topics)\n\nAs an Irish traveller, I strongly condemn his rhetoric surrounding nomadic people.\n\nAs a former Linux distro developer, I wouldn’t touch his shit if you paid me.\n\n## Will it do well?\n\nOnly time will tell. Right now, my read is that the question misses the point. Barney is not here to become the distro everyone installs. Success, by Doherty's own framing, is showing how a real distro gets built while the industry watches.\n\nYou already know that he has walked away from big projects before. Solus and AerynOS both carried on without him. Barney could be next, sure.\n\nWhat stands out to me is the timing of it all. Another Clear Linux member, Auke Kok, is building [The Ur Project](https://itsfoss.com/news/the-ur-project-appears/) from scratch, and neither of them is waiting for a foundation to get going.\n\nThe optimist inside me says that if the two of them ever collaborated, they could deliver something that shows the Linux ecosystem that pouring absurd amounts of money into a project isn't the only way to build well.\n\nEnjoyed this update? Support independent Linux news coverage\n\nIt's FOSS has been helping people use Linux for the past 14 years. Help us stay independent from big tech. Become a Plus member, enjoy ad-free reading and get 5 eBooks.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro", "canonical_source": "https://feed.itsfoss.com/link/24361/17441870/ikey-doherty-barney", "published_at": "2026-09-07 14:23:05+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-07 14:28:58.395597+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["Ikey Doherty", "Barney", "Omarchy", "David Heinemeier Hansson", "Solus", "AerynOS", "Omacom Foundation", "Michael Dell"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ikey-doherty-vs-omarchy-why-hes-building-barney-instead-of-another-distro.jsonld"}}