Applications

Every one of these is a Nirvana applet, drawn with the same components. Each is started from the launcher, or by its command.

Settings

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the network; sound; displays (resolution, refresh rate, scale); power, on machines with a battery or a backlight; mouse and touchpad; printers; applications (uninstall anything the launcher lists: Debian packages, snaps, Flatpaks); appearance; the dock, the clock and the launcher; windows; keyboard shortcuts; notifications; language; and the system’s health.

It talks to the system through the tools a desktop already has: nmcli (NetworkManager), bluetoothctl (BlueZ), pactl (PipeWire), CUPS. While it is open, Settings is also the Bluetooth pairing agent: PIN and confirmation requests appear as sheets.

Settings > System checks load, memory, disk usage, the renderer in use, GPU drivers and (for NVIDIA) temperature, utilization and video memory, and counts recent compositor delays and graphics errors. What cannot be checked is reported as unverified, not as fine.

Files

Places and drives in a sidebar, breadcrumbs you can type into, icons or a sortable table, picture thumbnails, tabs (Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W), drag and drop, a context menu, inline rename, a trash, properties and “open with”. It follows the conventions file managers share:

Also:

• Archives are unpacked (“Unpack Here”) and made (“Compress…”: ZIP, TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, 7Z). An archive opened with a double click shows what is inside it.
• A .deb opens as a sheet that says what it is and what else apt would install, and installs it after the administrator password.
• “What Takes Up Space…” measures a folder all the way down: its parts heaviest first, and the largest files anywhere under it.
• Drives, built-in and Windows ones, are mounted after the administrator password, read-only when they will not take writes.
• Nothing is overwritten and little is final: a copy that meets its own name gets a number, deleting goes to the trash, and only the trash deletes for good, after asking.

Terminal

Tabs, each a shell on a pseudo-terminal, drawn by xterm.js. Selecting copies and the right button pastes (changeable in its settings), Ctrl+Shift+F finds, Ctrl+click opens links, dropped files are typed as paths. A busy tab asks before it is closed. It is the default for the terminal hotkey and for programs that need a terminal.

Store

Applications from Debian’s catalog (AppStream) and any package by name. Installing, removing and updating go through apt, with the administrator password.

System Monitor

Live CPU and memory history, per-core load, swap, network and disk rates, GPU telemetry where there is any, and searchable processes, sortable by CPU, memory or name. A process is ended from its details sheet; only your own processes can be.

Cleaner

Every disk in use and how full it is; what can be cleaned away without losing anything you made, each kind with what it frees: the trash, thumbnails, programs’ caches, developer caches (npm, Cargo), and, with the administrator password, the package manager’s downloads, packages no longer needed, the system journal past its latest 100 MB, old logs, crash reports and old Snap versions. Packages no longer needed and developer caches are left unchosen until you choose them. For each disk, what takes up its space, folder by folder or the largest files, each shown in Files or moved to the trash.

Drivers

What every part of the computer runs on and the best there is for it, each with why: the NVIDIA driver for the card’s generation (Turing and newer from NVIDIA’s repository with its open kernel modules, Maxwell to Volta on Debian’s 550, older cards on the kernel’s own nouveau), newer firmware for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, network and graphics from Debian’s backports, the processor’s microcode, video decoding on the graphics card, the 32-bit drivers games need, drivers for printers, Logitech receivers and fingerprint readers, guest tools in a virtual machine, firmware updates inside the devices (fwupd), and kernel updates. The recommended ones are chosen at first; everything chosen is installed together, with one password. Sources are added only when something chosen needs them. A driver installed with NVIDIA’s own installer is left alone unless you choose to replace it. With Secure Boot on, drivers built on the computer are signed with its own key: the first time, you choose a password, and the firmware asks for it once at the next start to trust that key. Also in Settings > About.

PDF Viewer

PDF documents in a column of pages, as wide as the window or as large as you ask (Ctrl and the wheel, or a pinch). Text is selected and copied like anywhere else, found with the search field (Enter for the next place), and links are followed. The document’s contents open from the toolbar, and a column of small pages from the button beside it. Documents with a password ask for it.

Calculator

A line to type on, the answer as it is typed, keys, scientific functions, percentages the way people mean them (200 + 15%), and a history to pick up from.

Text Editor, Images, Videos

The editor opens plain-text files up to 1.5 MB. The picture viewer zooms, pans and rotates; the player plays video and music; both go through the other files of the folder the file was opened from.

Montage

A video editor: a media library, a real-time preview, a clip inspector and tracks for video layers, sound and titles.

Netbird

The browser, and the default for links. It has pages of its own.

Other programs

Anything else is installed as on Debian, and runs as an ordinary Wayland or X11 (XWayland) program. Links clicked in sandboxed applications (a Snap, a Flatpak) open in the browser.