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.
The design of Bravais is guided by four primary tenets:
-
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-rscompletely replacing standardsudo) to terminal emulators, status bars (ironbar), and application launchers (anyrun,onagre). -
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 thesteelbore.*namespace. -
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.
-
Self-Sufficient Configuration: Built with determinism and reproducibility at the forefront. Features minimal external dependencies beyond
nixpkgs, ensuring your host builds identically every time.
bravais/
├── flake.nix # Flake entry point (mkBravais helper, 10 nixosConfigurations)
├── flake.lock # Pinned dependencies
├── lib/ # Custom Nix helper functions
│ └── default.nix # Color palette definitions
├── hosts/ # Machine-specific configurations
│ └── bravais/ # Primary host
│ ├── default.nix # Host traits & module toggles
│ └── hardware.nix # 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)
| 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.
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 |
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 |
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 itConventions:
- 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.
AppImagePoolis 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(pinnedfetchurl+ SRI hash) inside the relevantmodules/packages/*.nixbundle 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.
modules/hardware/intel.nix exposes a marchLevel option. 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.
| Profile | ISA additions | Source | CFLAGS -march |
GOAMD64 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
bravais-v1 |
SSE2 baseline | CachyOS baseline | x86-64 |
v1 |
bravais-v2 |
SSE4.2 / POPCNT / CX16 | ALHP | x86-64-v2 |
v2 |
bravais-v3 |
AVX2 / BMI1/2 / FMA | CachyOS | x86-64-v3 |
v3 |
bravais-v4 |
AVX-512F/BW/CD/DQ/VL | CachyOS | x86-64-v4 |
v4 |
All profiles 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.
| 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 |
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 — marchLevel is selected per-flake-config in flake.nix (mkBravais)
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;
};
}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.
# 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: stable AVX-512 / v4)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais
# Switch to a specific stable CPU profile
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-v3 # AVX2
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-v2 # SSE4.2 (ALHP-derived)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-v1 # Baseline x86-64
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-v4 # AVX-512 (same as .#bravais)
# Switch to unstable channel (bleeding-edge packages)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-unstable # AVX-512 / v4
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-unstable-v3 # AVX2
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#bravais-unstable-v1 # Baseline x86-64- PRD.md — Product Requirements Document and module specifications
- ARCHITECTURE.md — System architecture and data-flow diagrams
- TODO.md — Implementation task tracking
| 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 |
Mohamed Hammad <Mohamed.Hammad@SpacecraftSoftware.org> Copyright (c) 2026 Mohamed Hammad | License: GPL-3.0-or-later https://Bravais.SpacecraftSoftware.org/
Bravais (A Steelbore OS NixOS Distribution) | Version 2.0