Steelbore OS Bravais

Bravais is a meticulously crafted, flake-based NixOS configuration implementing the Steelbore Standard. Designed from the ground up to be modular, memory-safe, and visually cohesive, it provides a performant, reliable, and highly customizable system architecture for advanced computing workflows.

Core Philosophy

The design of Bravais is guided by four primary tenets:

1. Rust-First Ecosystem (Memory Safety): Extreme priority is given to tools written in memory-safe languages. Bravais replaces legacy C-based utilities with robust Rust equivalents—ranging from core privilege escalation (sudo-rs completely replacing standard sudo) to terminal emulators, status bars (ironbar), and application launchers (anyrun, onagre).

2. Opt-in Modularity: Every feature, hardware profile, and application set is structurally siloed inside its own module using Nix's lib.mkEnableOption. Hosts boot only exactly what they explicitly declare via the steelbore.* namespace.

3. The Steelbore Telemetry Palette: Color is treated as telemetry, not just decoration. A strict, universal 6-color Steelbore Color Palette acts as a system-wide visual identity unifying the interface—extending from desktop environments down to TTY consoles.

4. Self-Sufficient Configuration: Built with determinism and reproducibility at the forefront. Features minimal external dependencies beyond nixpkgs, ensuring your host builds identically every time.

Directory Structure

bravais/
├── flake.nix                      # Flake entry point (mkBravais helper; per-machine configs)
├── flake.lock                     # Pinned dependencies
├── lib/                           # Custom Nix helper functions
│   └── default.nix                # Color palette definitions
├── hosts/                         # One directory per physical machine
│   ├── common.nix                 # Shared host config (user, shells, toggles)
│   └── thinkpad/                  # ThinkPad (i7-8665U) — hostname + hw + march pin
│       ├── default.nix            # Machine traits (hostName, hardware toggles)
│       └── hardware.nix           # Generated hardware configuration
├── modules/                       # NixOS modules (steelbore.* namespace)
│   ├── core/                      # Always-enabled necessities
│   │   ├── default.nix            # Core module entry
│   │   ├── nix.nix                # Nix settings, flakes, overlays
│   │   ├── boot.nix               # Bootloader, XanMod kernel
│   │   ├── locale.nix             # Timezone (UTC), i18n
│   │   ├── audio.nix              # PipeWire audio stack
│   │   └── security.nix           # sudo-rs, polkit
│   ├── theme/                     # Steelbore visual identity
│   │   ├── default.nix            # Color palette, TTY colors
│   │   └── fonts.nix              # Typography (Orbitron, JetBrains Mono)
│   ├── hardware/                  # Hardware-specific modules
│   │   ├── default.nix            # Hardware module entry
│   │   ├── fingerprint.nix        # fprintd support
│   │   └── intel.nix              # Intel CPU optimizations (x86-64 v1/v2/v3/v4 profiles)
│   ├── desktops/                  # Desktop environments (opt-in)
│   │   ├── default.nix            # Desktop module entry
│   │   ├── gnome.nix              # GNOME on Wayland (de-bloated)
│   │   ├── cosmic.nix             # COSMIC DE on Wayland
│   │   ├── niri.nix               # Niri + Ironbar (The Steelbore Standard)
│   │   ├── plasma.nix             # KDE Plasma on Wayland/X11
│   │   └── leftwm.nix             # LeftWM + Polybar on X11
│   ├── login/                     # Display/login managers
│   │   └── default.nix            # greetd + tuigreet + shell sessions
│   └── packages/                  # Application bundles (opt-in)
│       ├── default.nix            # Package module entry
│       ├── browsers.nix           # Web browsers
│       ├── terminals.nix          # Terminal emulators (Steelbore themed, starship+nushell)
│       ├── editors.nix            # Text editors & IDEs
│       ├── development.nix        # Dev tools & languages
│       ├── security.nix           # Encryption & auth (Sequoia stack)
│       ├── networking.nix         # Network tools
│       ├── multimedia.nix         # Media players & processing
│       ├── productivity.nix       # Office & notes
│       ├── system.nix             # System utilities (modern Unix, Docker + Youki OCI)
│       └── ai.nix                 # AI coding assistants
├── users/                         # User profiles
│   └── mj/                        # User "mj"
│       ├── default.nix            # System-level user config
│       └── home.nix               # Home Manager configuration
├── overlays/                      # Package overlays
│   └── default.nix                # Custom derivations (sequoia-wot fix)
└── v0/                            # Frozen v0-era configurations (archive)

Spacecraft Software Color Palette

Token	Hex	Role
Void Navy	#000027	Background / Canvas
Molten Amber	#D98E32	Primary Text / Active Readout
Steel Blue	#4B7EB0	Primary Accent / Structural
Radium Green	#50FA7B	Success / Safe Status
Red Oxide	#FF5C5C	Warning / Error Status
Liquid Coolant	#8BE9FD	Info / Links

#000027 (Void Navy) is the mandatory background for ALL Spacecraft Software surfaces.

Desktop Environments

Bravais officially provisions definitions for four primary desktop targets:

Desktop	Protocol	Status Bar	Launcher	Description
Niri	Wayland	Ironbar	onagre/anyrun	The Steelbore Standard — Scrolling tiling compositor
COSMIC	Wayland	cosmic-panel	cosmic-launcher	System76's fully Rust-based desktop
GNOME	Wayland	GNOME Shell	GNOME	De-bloated GNOME with curated extensions
LeftWM	X11	Polybar	rlaunch/rofi	High-performance Rust tiling fallback

Terminal Emulators

All terminals are themed with the Steelbore color palette and launch nushell + starship by default.

Terminal	Stack	Notes
Alacritty	Rust / GPU	Primary Rust-native terminal
WezTerm	Rust / GPU	Lua-configurable, full tab bar
Rio	Rust / GPU	Native GPU rendering
Ghostty	Zig / GPU	Memory-safe, fast
Warp	Rust / AI	AI-powered terminal
WaveTerm	Go / AI	AI-native terminal
COSMIC Term	Rust	COSMIC desktop terminal
Konsole	C++ / KDE	Steelbore colorscheme + profile
Yakuake	C++ / KDE	Drop-down terminal (Konsole backend)
Ptyxis	C / GNOME	VTE-based, GNOME integration
GNOME Console	C / GNOME	Minimal GNOME 4x terminal
Foot	C / Wayland	Lightweight Wayland terminal
XFCE4 Terminal	C / GTK	XFCE4 compatible
XTerm	C / X11	Classic X11 fallback
Termius	—	SSH client

AppImage Support

Bravais provides first-class, kernel-level AppImage support. The programs.appimage module (modules/packages/system.nix) is enabled with binfmt = true, registering a binfmt_misc handler that transparently routes any *.AppImage through appimage-run (an FHS environment supplying FUSE and the libraries AppImages expect). The result: you simply mark an AppImage executable and run it directly — no wrapper command required.

chmod +x ~/Applications/SomeApp.AppImage
~/Applications/SomeApp.AppImage          # kernel routes it through appimage-run automatically
appimage-run ~/Applications/SomeApp.AppImage   # explicit fallback if binfmt doesn't catch it

Conventions:

• Target directory. Loose AppImages live in ~/Applications/ (e.g. warp.appimage, waveterm-linux-x86_64-*.AppImage). This is the canonical drop location for manually managed AppImages.
• GUI manager. AppImagePool is provisioned via Flatpak (io.github.prateekmedia.appimagepool) for browsing, downloading, and updating AppImages with desktop-entry integration.
• Preferred: package as a Nix derivation. When you rely on an AppImage regularly, the Standard-aligned move is to wrap it reproducibly with pkgs.appimageTools.wrapType2 (pinned fetchurl + SRI hash) inside the relevant modules/packages/*.nix bundle rather than leaving a loose binary in ~/Applications/. BrowserOS (modules/packages/browsers.nix) is the reference example — it pins the upstream GitHub-release AppImage and builds a store-resident, march-aware wrapper. The package-manager priority (Guix → Nix → Cargo → Homebrew → Flatpak → Snap) still applies: reach for AppImage only when a tool isn't available higher up the chain.

Per-machine configurations

hosts/ holds one directory per physical machine. Shared host settings live in hosts/common.nix; each hosts/<machine>/ imports it plus its own generated hardware.nix and pins the machine-specific bits: networking.hostName and the steelbore.hardware.* toggles, including the x86-64 march level. The flake's mkBravais { host, channel ? "stable" } then builds a stable + an unstable variant per machine. Adding a machine = drop a hosts/<machine>/ dir + two output lines in flake.nix.

Configuration	Machine	Channel	March
bravais-thinkpad	ThinkPad (i7-8665U, Whiskey Lake)	stable (26.05)	v3 (AVX2; CPU has no AVX-512)
bravais-thinkpad-unstable	ThinkPad	unstable (rolling)	v3
bravais	alias → bravais-thinkpad (stable)

The march level is the marchLevel option in modules/hardware/intel.nix (enum v1–v4). Compiler flags are sourced from CachyOS (v1, v3, v4) and ALHP (v2 — the authoritative v2 source, as CachyOS skips v2); all levels use -mtune=native and include pack-relative-relocs in RUSTFLAGS. The four levels are SSE2 baseline (v1), SSE4.2/POPCNT/CX16 (v2), AVX2/BMI1·2/FMA (v3), and AVX-512F/BW/CD/DQ/VL (v4).

All levels share: -O3 -flto=auto -fuse-ld=gold -mpclmul (v2+) and full security hardening (-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=3, -fstack-clash-protection, -fcf-protection, -Clink-arg=pack-relative-relocs). -fuse-ld=gold is required on NixOS so GCC can resolve the LTO plugin path in /nix/store.

Flake Inputs

Input	Source	Purpose
nixpkgs	nixos-25.11 stable	Core package set
home-manager	release-25.11	Home Manager (follows nixpkgs)
nixpkgs-unstable	nixos-unstable (rolling)	Bleeding-edge package set
home-manager-unstable	main (rolling)	Home Manager (follows nixpkgs-unstable)
nix-flatpak	github:gmodena/nix-flatpak	Declarative Flatpak management
gitway	Spacecraft-Software/Gitway (tracks main)	Gitway SSH agent NixOS + HM modules
kimi-cli	MoonshotAI/kimi-cli (tracks main)	Kimi Code CLI agent

Host Configuration Pattern

Hosts toggle modules declaratively via the steelbore.* namespace:

{
  steelbore = {
    # Desktop environments
    desktops.gnome.enable = true;
    desktops.cosmic.enable = true;
    desktops.plasma.enable = true;
    desktops.niri.enable = true;
    desktops.leftwm.enable = true;

    # Hardware — set per-machine in hosts/<machine>/default.nix
    # (fingerprint, intel.enable, and intel.marchLevel are pinned there)
    hardware.fingerprint.enable = true;
    hardware.intel.enable = true;

    # Package bundles
    packages.browsers.enable = true;
    packages.terminals.enable = true;
    packages.editors.enable = true;
    packages.development.enable = true;
    packages.security.enable = true;
    packages.networking.enable = true;
    packages.multimedia.enable = true;
    packages.productivity.enable = true;
    packages.system.enable = true;
    packages.ai.enable = true;
    packages.flatpak.enable = true;
  };
}

Project Posture

Bravais is a personal hobby project — see NOTICE.md for the full no-warranty / no-liability statement. Contributions are welcome but acceptance is at the maintainer's discretion; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Quick Start

# Check the configuration validation
nix flake check

# Show all flake outputs (includes all CPU profiles)
nix flake show

# Dry-run build
nixos-rebuild dry-build --flake .#bravais

# Build without switching
nixos-rebuild build --flake .#bravais

# Switch to new configuration (default alias → stable ThinkPad)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais

# ThinkPad (stable 26.05, x86-64-v3)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-thinkpad

# ThinkPad on the unstable channel (bleeding-edge packages)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-thinkpad-unstable

Documentation

• PRD.md — Product Requirements Document and module specifications
• ARCHITECTURE.md — System architecture and data-flow diagrams
• TODO.md — Implementation task tracking

Package Statistics

Category	Rust-First	Other	Total
System Utilities	47	21	68
Networking	12	8	20
Development	10	8	18
Multimedia	12	3	15
Terminals	5	10	15
Editors	6	9	15
Security	9	4	13
Productivity	4	5	9
AI	2	5	7
Browsers	0	5	5
Total	107	78	185

Maintainer

Mohamed Hammad <Mohamed.Hammad@SpacecraftSoftware.org> Copyright (c) 2026 Mohamed Hammad | License: GPL-3.0-or-later https://Bravais.SpacecraftSoftware.org/

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Bravais (A Steelbore OS NixOS Distribution) | Version 2.0