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Ryoku is a premium Arch workstation environment. Its runtime, command surface, and shell are Ryoku-owned. Selected ideas and code were adapted from upstream projects for speed, ergonomics, and rendering work that did not need to be reinvented.

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Where Ryoku comes from

Ryoku draws from three upstream sources, all credited in the repository’s NOTICE:
  • Omarchy (basecamp/omarchy) is the ancestor of Ryoku’s install architecture, command patterning, and maintenance instincts. Ryoku began as an Omarchy-derived Arch environment, then diverged into its own packaging, shell, and CLI. The MIT license and original copyright notice for the Omarchy-derived core are preserved at LICENSES/MIT-Omarchy-Ryoku-core.txt.
  • Caelestia (caelestia-dots/shell) is the source the Ryoku shell adapts the frame-blob rendering from. The Ryoku.Blobs QML/C++ plugin and parts of the shell’s animation and motion curves derive from Caelestia and remain under GPL-3, compatible with Ryoku’s GPL-3.
  • DankMaterialShell (AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell) is the source for portions of the Ryoku display configuration UI in the Hub. It is MIT-licensed; copyright (c) 2025 Avenge Media LLC. The notice is preserved in the repository’s NOTICE.
The whole project is distributed under GPL-3. Adapted portions keep their original licenses where required, and NOTICE records the attribution.

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How to read names and surfaces

  • Current runtime behavior is Ryoku-owned. Anything you use day to day belongs to the Ryoku surface: the ryoku CLI, Ryoku Settings, the Quickshell UI, ~/.config/hypr, ~/.config/quickshell/hub, the [ryoku] package repo.
  • Historical names that still appear in the tree are there for attribution, legal hygiene, or because they point at external objects that still exist.
  • The LICENSE and NOTICE files at the repo root are required attribution for inherited components and their open-source licenses. They stay.

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What does not ship as active runtime

These names belong to the lineage, not to the current desktop. None of them ship as part of Ryoku’s runtime:
  • Waybar is not the bar. The Ryoku bar is the Quickshell pill and its popouts, under ryoku/shell/quickshell/pill/.
  • Mako is not the notifier. Notifications surface through the shell.
  • SwayOSD is not used.
  • Tofi, Walker, and Elephant are not the launcher. The launcher is ryoku-shell launcher, bound to Mod+Space.
  • Prototype runtime trees used during the transition out of Omarchy are gone.
  • Old boot branding assets, Omarchy package repo URLs, keyring URLs, and mirror URLs are not part of Ryoku’s package or update plumbing. Ryoku ships from the signed [ryoku] repo (release/packages/).
If you find documentation, scripts, or screenshots that reference these names as live runtime, treat them as stale.

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Current Ryoku surfaces

The Ryoku-owned surfaces a user or maintainer actually touches: There is no migration ledger and no channel switching. Configuration is reconciled declaratively by ryoku materialize; stateful drift is reconciled by ryoku doctor. See Updates for the runtime flow and Maintenance for the contributor flow.

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Compatibility bridges

A small set of OMARCHY_* environment variables may remain as compatibility bridges for legacy scripts or pre-cutover system states. They exist only to keep older invocations working while the migration to Ryoku-owned names lands. New code reads and writes the Ryoku-owned names (RYOKU_REPO, RYOKU_CONFIG_BASE, RYOKU_CHANNEL, RYOKU_DRYRUN); never introduce a new OMARCHY_* name.

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How to review a historical reference

When you find a legacy name in the tree, classify it before changing it:
  1. Attribution. Keep it if it preserves required notices or upstream credit (LICENSE, NOTICE, LICENSES/MIT-Omarchy-Ryoku-core.txt).
  2. External identifier. Keep package, repo, or remote IDs that must stay aligned with published upstream objects.
  3. Compatibility bridge. Keep an OMARCHY_* env var only when removing it would break a legacy invocation that has not been retired.
  4. Active runtime. Anything that affects current behavior belongs in a Ryoku-owned surface and should not leak historical naming. Rename or remove it.
For active maintenance work, Maintenance is the spine. This page only covers heritage and attribution.

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See also

  • Vision for Ryoku’s framing as a Ryoku-owned environment.
  • Maintenance for how changes ship to users.
  • Updates for the runtime update model.
Last modified on June 24, 2026