# omadesign: I shipped a native Linux design suite in 13 days

Source: https://www.michaelchurley.com/blog/omadesign-native-linux-studio-13-days  
Published: 2026-09-08  
Author: Michael C. Hurley  
Tags: omadesign, rust, linux, egui, asahi, omarchy, design, photography, motion, martech

![omadesign welcome screen. Make something, 52 templates, New document presets](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelmonetized/omadesign/master/media/design.jpg)

## Who

I design on Linux now. Omarchy. Asahi. The camera hole has Naarchy. The creative suite did not make the move.

Adobe stayed on the other OS. Affinity is partial. Browser tools are tabs that die when the laptop sleeps. Electron "studios" burn RAM and still feel like a website with window chrome.

omadesign is for the operator who already lives in a themed Linux desktop and refuses to open four apps to finish one mark. Designers leaving macOS. Photographers who want LibRaw without leaving the seat. Brand freelancers who carry palettes and type roles as files, not screenshots in Slack.

If you build MarTech, ship local tools, or just want `cargo` and a tarball instead of a Creative Cloud invoice, this is for you.

## What

I built a native Rust studio on `eframe` / egui. GTK and Electron stayed off the table.

Four personas share one document and one layer stack: **Design** (vector), **Pixel** (paint/retouch), **Photo** (RAW develop), **Motion** (timeline to animated SVG / Lottie). Geometry is defined once. Drawn for the live canvas and for PNG/SVG export. Mutations go through `Cmd` + `History`.

![Design persona. Block Party poster, rotated color block at 19°, Inspect panel](https://michaelmonetized.github.io/omadesign/media/showcase/design.webp)

Current version is **0.0.4-alpha**, "The handles got the memo." aarch64 and x86_64 `*-unknown-linux-gnu` tarballs on GitHub Releases. Linked against **glibc 2.35**. Phosphor Light icons. Omarchy theme colors and `fontconfig` / `omarchy font current`. Max as the default face.

Fifty-two editable vector templates. Brand kits travel as `.omacolors`, `.omatype`, `.omabrand/`. Photo side: LibRaw for DNG/CR2/CR3/NEF/ARW/RAF, 16-bit linear source, `.omaphoto` sidecars, `.omapreset` looks, folder batch. Motion: thirteen presets, Lottie JSON with unsupported-feature reporting.

Interop is boring on purpose: PSD/PSB, PDF, AI-compatible PDF, OpenRaster, SVG/SVGZ, optional Affinity bridge, native `.oma`. CLI `--inspect` / `--convert`. MIT. Copyright 2026 Michael C Hurley.

![Photo persona. Coast at golden hour, Develop Color panel, Place in Design](https://michaelmonetized.github.io/omadesign/media/showcase/photo.webp)

## Where

It runs where I run: Asahi Omarchy, Arch-class ARM, anything glibc 2.35 or newer. Same binary story on x86_64 via zig cross-compile. local release builds, uploaded by hand. No GitHub Actions bill.

Repo: [michaelmonetized/omadesign](https://github.com/michaelmonetized/omadesign). Studio site on Pages: [michaelmonetized.github.io/omadesign](https://michaelmonetized.github.io/omadesign/). Manual under `/docs/manual/`.

![Repo layout. assets, docs, examples, media, remotion, scripts](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelmonetized/omadesign/master/media/mark.png)

On this machine the binary is `~/.local/bin/omadesign`, reporting `omadesign 0.0.4-alpha`. Install one-liner lives in `scripts/install-remote.sh`. The audience sits next to the Omarchy / Asahi tribe and the indie builders who already read Cargo.toml before they read the landing page.

![Motion persona. After Hours listening room, timeline keyframes, Make it move presets](https://michaelmonetized.github.io/omadesign/media/showcase/motion.webp)

## When

**2026-08-26.** Spike as "Atelier v0.1". Rust + egui all-in-one. Prove the canvas before naming the product.

**2026-08-28.** Rename to omadesign. glibc 2.35 link. Canvas handles, pen, live type, zoom-to-box. Phosphor + desktop theme. First lander and docs.

**2026-08-29.** fontconfig enumeration, Google Fonts on demand, Max default. Palettes. Compound paths. Shape and asset browsers. Zig cross-compile for x86_64. Remotion hero. GPU texture reuse. First alpha-rc tags.

**2026-09-02–03.** Motion timeline, Lottie, welcome that fits. QA pass on the early user-test list.

**2026-09-05.** Precision guides, masks, healing. Fifty-two templates. Shortcut HUD. Portable brand libraries. Pen/type/logo film. Website rebuild. Catppuccin, studio tour, real recordings.

**2026-09-06.** v0.0.1-alpha packages verified. Layered interop. Camera RAW. v0.0.2-alpha same day.

**2026-09-07.** Selection and layer QA. Photo batch + presets to v0.0.3-alpha. Rotated node editing and context-menu flips to v0.0.4-alpha.

**2026-09-08.** Sixty-eight commits from init. Four tagged alphas. Same-day docs experiment: a scoped First-File Setup offer went up and came back down; CHANGELOG keeps the record, app and license never changed.

Thirteen days. That is the clock.

![omadesign mark. geometric design wordmark](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelmonetized/omadesign/master/media/mark.png)

## Why

Linux got my daily driver. The design suite did not. That gap is the reason.

I needed one seat: vector precision, paint, RAW, light motion, without renting four subscriptions or babysitting an Electron process. I needed the chrome to follow my desktop colors and fonts, not a baked orange skin. I needed releases I can rebuild on the machine that ships them.

So I linked glibc 2.35, zig-cross-compiled x86_64, uploaded tarballs with SHA-256, and kept shipping alphas until the handles behaved on rotated nodes. Own the toolchain. Build in public.

omadesign is still alpha. advanced text layout, symbols, collab, PDF/X + CMYK are on the roadmap, not in the tarball. Affinity write is not there. RAW varies by camera. That is fine. The document model works. The personas share a layer stack. The downloads exist for ARM64 and x86_64 today.

What would you put in the first `.oma` file if you sat down on a fresh Omarchy box tonight?