Ryoku Arch

力と美のために · For the sake of power and beauty.

Ryoku is a premium Arch workstation for powerful desktops and laptops. It is pre-riced, plugin-minded, and built for people who want their Linux machine to feel fast, sharp, and deliberate from first boot.

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_{▶ Watch the Ryoku showcase on YouTube}

Ryoku is not trying to be the lightest Arch setup in the room. It takes the other lane: a polished workstation that assumes the machine has room to breathe. The target is a strong desktop or laptop, not a budget box that needs every megabyte saved.

The current desktop is Hyprland with a Quickshell shell layer. The install and core command shape descend from Omarchy, integrated into Ryoku's own plugin-first surface. The product is coherent by design: one Ryoku system, with its surfaces continuously refined as the workstation matures.

The goal is simple: power and beauty in the same system. Fast windowing, a strict command surface, good defaults, strong visual identity, and plugins that add real workstation behavior instead of turning the desktop into a pile of loose tray apps.

Omarchy is a lean, opinionated Arch install that can fit modest laptops well. Ryoku is the opposite side of that family tree: heavier, more visual, more integrated, and aimed at capable hardware.

Ryoku is:

• Premium Arch, not a separate distro. It is an Arch environment with its own defaults, install flow, shell, commands, and branding.
• Pre-riced by default. The first boot should already feel intentional.
• Plugin-minded. VPN, capture, media, developer, hardware, and security operations can become clean Ryoku plugins and shell surfaces.
• Built for powerful desktops and laptops. The baseline is 16GB RAM or better; 32GB+ is the comfortable target for VMs, gaming, creative tools, and heavy multitasking.

Ryoku is not:

• A budget-PC profile.
• A minimal window-manager starter kit.
• A narrow, niche-focused workflow profile.
• A frozen design; Ryoku's surfaces keep evolving.

• Desktop: Hyprland Wayland session, Quickshell-based shell surfaces, launcher, sidebars, dashboard, session controls, and SDDM theming.
• Ryoku core: ryoku-* commands for updates, migrations, packages, snapshots, hardware helpers, themes, wallpaper, keybinds, and app launchers.
• Plugin lanes: shell and command hooks for VPN, Tailscale, screenshots, media, developer tools, hardware controls, and future workflow modules.
• Workstation defaults: Kitty, Helium/Chromium, Nautilus, Yazi, Neovim, Obsidian, Docker tooling, media tools, gaming-ready packages, and AUR-backed extras.
• Brand: Greek Noir, the Ryoku 力 mark, and the slogan: 力と美のために - For the sake of power and beauty.

First beta. Ryoku has cut 0.1.0-beta1: the move from the Niri/iNiR setup to the Hyprland/Caelestia shell has reached beta, and the install flow runs end to end, including verified dual-boot alongside an existing OS. Signed ISO builds are published at ryoku.dev; see Download and verify, or build from source. The stable release is the next milestone.

The active workstation track is Hyprland. Development happens on unstable-dev, then stabilizes into main for release users. The shell keeps evolving: Ryoku builds on its Omarchy install/core ancestry as the Ryoku-owned plugin shell matures.

Ryoku ships through two separate, clearly bounded paths:

• Ryoku OS (ISO install) the full Arch workstation: bootloader, filesystem, display manager, and system config. This is the product. Code in install/.
• Ryoku Shell (experimental) the Ryoku desktop shell layered onto an Arch system you already use, in user scope, reversible, coexisting with your current setup. Code in shell-install/.

See install paths for the full comparison, and shell-install/README.md for the experimental shell installer.

Note: The experimental Ryoku shell installer is temporarily disabled while shell-install/ is fixed. ISO install is unaffected.

Signed builds are published on the website at https://ryoku.dev. Use the Download page to get the latest ISO, signature, and checksums. The latest ISO badge above tracks the current published build id.

Prefer to build it yourself? Use the repo-local ISO tooling:

• ISO build recipe
• Release pipeline notes

Releases are signed with:

• Key: Ryoku Releases <releases@ryoku.dev>
• Fingerprint: 621F 579B D155 94C4 DE84 0B7D 5329 7813 C0BE E055
• Public key in repo: keys/ryoku-release-key.pub.asc

Always check that the imported key's fingerprint matches the one above before trusting it. Full verification commands are in docs/release-pipeline.md.

• bin/ shipped ryoku-* commands, one purpose per script.
• config/ Hyprland, terminal, app, and user config seeds.
• default/ system defaults, templates, boot assets, and service drop-ins.
• install/ OS/ISO installer, package manifests, hardware setup, first-run flow.
• shell-install/ experimental shell-only installer for existing Arch systems.
• shell/ the current Quickshell-based Ryoku shell sources.
• themes/ Ryoku and user-selectable theme payloads.

• Vision product direction, audience, non-goals.
• Keybindings shipped Hyprland and shell reference.
• Plugins current and planned workflow plugins.
• Maintenance release process and workflow.
• Customization safe text-based customization surfaces.
• Branding visual and verbal identity.
• ISO build recipe build recipe and hardware notes.
• Heritage upstream inheritance and compatibility boundaries.
• Contributing focused ways to help.
• Security policy private reporting for security-sensitive issues.

• Omarchy by DHH, for the install architecture, command shape, and early Arch desktop foundation.
• ActivSpot by Devvvmn, for Dynamic Island code adapted into Ryoku's island work and launcher/island inspiration.
• qylock by Darkkal44, optional SDDM theme bundle.

Full attribution: CREDITS.md, NOTICE.

GPL-3.0. MIT notices for inherited permissive components are preserved under LICENSES.