Supporting the future of the open web: Cloudflare is sponsoring Ladybird and Omarchy

At Cloudflare, we believe that helping build a better Internet means encouraging a healthy ecosystem of options for how people can connect safely and quickly to the resources they need. Sometimes that means we tackle immense, Internet-scale problems with established partners. And sometimes that means we support and partner with fantastic open teams taking big bets on the next generation of tools.

To that end, today we are excited to announce our support of two independent, open source projects: Ladybird, an ambitious project to build a completely independent browser from the ground up, and Omarchy, an opinionated Arch Linux setup for developers. 

Cloudflare has a long history of supporting open-source software – both through our own projects shared with the community and external projects that we support. We see our sponsorship of Ladybird and Omarchy as a natural extension of these efforts in a moment where energy for a diverse ecosystem is needed more than ever.  

Most of us spend a significant amount of time using a web browser –  in fact, you’re probably using one to read this blog! The beauty of browsers is that they help users experience the open Internet, giving you access to everything from the largest news publications in the world to a tiny website hosted on a Raspberry Pi.  

Unlike dedicated apps, browsers reduce the barriers to building an audience for new services and communities on the Internet. If you are launching something new, you can offer it through a browser in a world where most people have absolutely zero desire to install an app just to try something out. Browsers help encourage competition and new ideas on the open web.

While the openness of how browsers work has led to an explosive growth of services on the Internet, browsers themselves have consolidated to a tiny handful of viable options. There’s a high probability you’re reading this on a Chromium-based browser, like Google’s Chrome, along with about 65% of users on the Internet. However, that consolidation has also scared off new entrants in the space. If all browsers ship on the same operating systems, powered by the same underlying technology, we lose out on potential privacy, security and performance innovations that could benefit developers and everyday Internet users. 

^{A screenshot of Cloudflare Workers developer docs in Ladybird} 

This is where Ladybird comes in: it’s not Chromium based – everything is built from scratch. The Ladybird project has two main components: LibWeb, a brand-new rendering engine, and LibJS, a brand-new JavaScript engine with its own parser, interpreter, and bytecode execution engine. 

Building an engine that can correctly and securely render the modern web is a monumental task that requires deep technical expertise and navigating decades of specifications governed by standards bodies like the W3C and WHATWG. And because Ladybird implements these standards directly, it also stress-tests them in practice. Along the way, the project has found, reported, and sometimes fixed countless issues in the specifications themselves, contributions that strengthen the entire web platform for developers, browser vendors, and anyone who may attempt to build a browser in the future.

Whether to build something from scratch or not is a perennial source of debate between software engineers, but absent the pressures of revenue or special interests, we’re excited about the ways Ladybird will prioritize privacy, performance, and security, potentially in novel ways that will influence the entire ecosystem.

^{A screenshot of the Omarchy development environment}

Developers deserve choice, too. Beyond the browser, a developer’s operating system and environment is where they spend a ton of time – and where a few big players have become the dominant choice. Omarchy challenges this by providing a complete, opinionated Arch Linux distribution that transforms a bare installation into a modern development workstation that developers are excited about.

Perfecting one’s development environment can be a career-long art, but learning how to do so shouldn’t be a barrier to beginning to code. The beauty of Omarchy is that it makes Linux approachable to more developers by doing most of the setup for them, making it look good, and then making it configurable. Omarchy provides most of the tools developers need – like Neovim, Docker, and Git – out of the box, and tons of other features.

At its core, Omarchy embraces Linux for all of its complexity and configurability, and makes a version of it that is accessible and fun to use for developers that don’t have a deep background in operating systems. Projects like this ensure that a powerful, independent Linux desktop remains a compelling choice for people building the next generation of applications and Internet infrastructure. 

We want to be very clear here: we are supporting these projects because we believe the Internet can be better if these projects, and more like them, succeed. No requirement to use our technology stack or any arrangement like that. We are happy to partner with great teams like Ladybird and Omarchy simply because we believe that our missions have real overlap.

Ladybird is still in its early days, with an alpha release planned for 2026, but we encourage anyone who is interested to consider contributing to the open source codebase as they prepare for launch.

"Cloudflare knows what it means to build critical web infrastructure on the server side. With Ladybird, we’re tackling the near-monoculture on the client side, because we believe it needs multiple implementations to stay healthy, and we’re extremely thankful for their support in that mission.”

– Andreas Kling, Founder, Ladybird  

Omarchy 3.0 was released just last week with faster installation and increased Macbook compatibility, so if you’ve been Linux-curious for a while now, we encourage you to try it out!

"Cloudflare's support of Omarchy has ensured we have the fastest ISO and package delivery from wherever you are in the world. Without a need to manually configure mirrors or deal with torrents. The combo of a super CDN, great R2 storage, and the best DDoS shield in the business has been a huge help for the project."

– David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Omarchy and Ruby on Rails

A better Internet is one where people have more choice in how they browse and develop new software. We’re incredibly excited about the potential of Ladybird, Omarchy, and other audacious projects that support a free and open Internet.