Omarchy 3.5 Is Here Panther Lake Support, Once, And I Built A Website In Minutes
you can get once here
you can get once here https://github.com/basecamp/once
more scripts stuff at
and VPS if you need it
https://tinyurl.com/VPShost-hostinger
Omarchy 3.5 dropped yesterday and there's a lot to unpack. New themes, Panther Lake compatibility, and a brand new app called Once from 37signals baked right into the installer. In this video I go through everything that's new, talk about why Panther Lake matters for Linux users, and then deploy a full website to the cloud using Once, Claude Code, and a cheap VPS.
WHAT'S NEW IN OMARCHY 3.5
The Lumen theme is the headline addition with new wallpapers including some beautiful classical-style paintings. There's also Retro A2 with a really cool aesthetic and expanded grub box backgrounds.
LocalSend is now integrated into the file manager. Right-click any file and send it directly to another device on your network.
Other additions include T2 Mac compatibility fixes, Hyprland improvements, tmux integration, a sudo pass toggle that gives AI tools temporary elevated access for debugging, and battery improvements for laptops.
And then there's Once — installable straight from the Omarchy menu under Install, Services, Once. One click and you've got a Docker-based app deployment platform running locally or pointed at a remote server.
WHY PANTHER LAKE MATTERS
Intel's Panther Lake chips are a genuine shift for Linux laptop users. For years, powerful long-lasting laptops meant Mac, but you can't run Linux properly on Apple Silicon.
Panther Lake changes that. Performance is competitive with Apple's M5 — single-core is close, multi-core wins, which matters hugely for DaVinci Resolve and multi-threaded workloads. Battery life is dramatically better than previous Intel generations. The Arc B390 integrated GPU handles casual gaming at 1080p, which is more than a Mac can say.
Most importantly — Omarchy 3.5 is fully compatible with Panther Lake. It's been tested on the new Dell systems and works out of the box.
ONCE - LOCAL DEMO
I install Once locally on Omarchy through the installer menu. You get a TUI to deploy three built-in 37signals apps — Campfire, Writebook, and Fizzy. I demo Writebook, deploying it to book.localhost with a working publishing platform up in under a minute.
The real power is custom Docker images. Containerise anything, push it to Git, and deploy through Once with a couple of keystrokes.
ONCE - CLOUD DEPLOYMENT
I walk through deploying Once on a VPS from scratch. Spin up a cheap Hetzner server, configure wildcard DNS on Cloudflare, set SSL to Full Strict, then run a deployment script that hardens the server — fail2ban, firewall locked to ports 22, 80, and 443, unattended upgrades, swap file, log capping, disabling unnecessary services, and deploying Docker and Once.
Then I use Claude Code to SSH in and run a security audit. Claude checks the firewall, SSH config, listening ports, and fail2ban status. It spotted an unnecessary shell account and locked it down. Having AI as a server admin assistant is genuinely useful.
VIBE CODING A WEBSITE
I fed Claude the synopsis of Colossus: The Forbin Project and asked it to build a themed website. One shot, no design hints. It generated the entire site including a chatbot that responds in the voice of Colossus, connected to Groq running Llama 3.3 70B. The API key is configured through Once's environment variables.
The site is containerised, pushed to a private Git repo, and deployed through Once as a custom Docker image. It's live at www.forbin-project.com — have a play with the chatbot while it's up.
THE VPS SCRIPT
The server deployment script is in the members area. It handles SSH keys, firewall, fail2ban, Docker, Once, Git authentication with personal access tokens, swap file, log capping, and service cleanup. Get your server hardened and Once running, then use Claude to go further.
I make videos about Linux, Omarchy, gaming, self-hosting, and building things with AI. Subscribe if that sounds like your thing.