BOS — Bread Operating System

An Arch-based, Hyprland desktop distribution that ships the bread ecosystem preconfigured. One Calamares install produces a themed, bootable Wayland desktop — no manual Arch bootstrap, no wiring up dotfiles, no per-tool bakery installs.

Design rationale and the btrfs/A-B roadmap live in DESIGN.md. This file is the practical overview: what's in the image, how to build it, and how to test it.

What you get

• Compositor: Hyprland with a native-Lua config (hyprland.lua), curated keybinds, snappy animations, blur, and pywal-driven colours on a black base.
• bread ecosystem, baked into /etc/skel from bakery-managed binaries (no network needed at install time): the bread/breadd automation daemon, breadbar (status bar + notifications), breadbox (launcher), breadclip (clipboard history), breadcrumbs (Wi-Fi profiles), breadpad/breadman (notes), breadpaper (wallpaper + theme), breadsearch (system search), breadmon (monitor layout TUI), breadshot (screenshots), bread-theme (the shared palette engine), and the bakery package manager. breadlock (lock screen + greeter) ships as its own pacman package alongside bos-settings, not through bakery. See below for what each one actually does.
• bos-settings: a GTK4 control panel that configures every bread* app's config from a GUI (non-destructively), plus snapshot rollback and bakery updates. See below.
• Login: greetd + breadgreet (bread-ecosystem's own greeter, under cage) → Hyprland session.
• Boot splash: Plymouth bos theme (logo + spinner, black background).
• Theming: global dark across GTK3 (Adwaita-dark), GTK4/libadwaita (color-scheme: prefer-dark), and Qt (qt5ct/qt6ct Fusion dark); Papirus-Dark icons; Bibata cursor.
• Apps: kitty, nautilus (+ gvfs), Zen browser, VLC, loupe, gnome-text-editor, gnome-calculator, file-roller, with file associations wired in mimeapps.list. yay ships for AUR access beyond bakery's bread ecosystem + [breadway].
• Hardware: pipewire audio, NetworkManager, BlueZ + blueman, CUPS printing with avahi mDNS discovery, TLP power management, fwupd firmware updates.
• Resilience: btrfs + snapper + snap-pac + grub-btrfs snapshots on every pacman transaction; zram swap; ufw firewall (deny-incoming, mDNS allowed).
• Security: full-disk encryption (LUKS, via Calamares' built-in support — cryptsetup + the matching mkinitcpio/GRUB wiring ship so an encrypted install actually boots) and self-signed Secure Boot (via sbctl, enrolled automatically at install time when the firmware is in Setup Mode).

Repo layout

bos/
├── Cargo.toml                     # workspace (members: bos-settings)
├── bos-settings/                  # GTK4 unified settings app (Rust)
│   └── src/
│       ├── config/mod.rs          # non-destructive toml_edit config layer
│       └── ui/{widgets,window,sidebar}.rs, ui/views/*.rs
├── iso/                           # archiso profile
│   ├── profiledef.sh
│   ├── packages.x86_64            # live + installed package set
│   └── airootfs/                  # files overlaid onto the image
│       └── etc/
│           ├── skel/              # default user dotfiles (hypr, kitty, gtk, …)
│           └── calamares/         # installer config + post-install.sh
├── packaging/                     # in-house PKGBUILDs for AUR-only deps
│   ├── arch/                      # bos-settings
│   ├── calamares/
│   └── bibata/
├── .forgejo/workflows/            # CI: build + publish packages to [breadway]
├── build-local.sh                 # native ISO build for this machine
└── DESIGN.md

Building the ISO

build-local.sh builds the image natively (no container) and bakes this machine's bakery-installed bread binaries into /etc/skel:

sudo ./build-local.sh              # release-quality (xz squashfs)
sudo FAST_BUILD=1 ./build-local.sh # fast dev iteration (zstd squashfs)

The ISO lands in out/bos-<date>-x86_64.iso. The script pins SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH (reproducible UUIDs) and rewrites the [breadway] repo URL to the Tailscale-reachable Forgejo registry for the build.

Why some packages are in-house

calamares, zen-browser-bin, bibata-cursor-theme, and yay-bin are AUR-only. BOS keeps a PKGBUILD for each under packaging/ and republishes the built package to the [breadway] repo via a Forgejo Actions workflow (built on the hestia self-hosted runner, published with a scoped registry token). bos-settings itself publishes the same way on a v* tag.

Verifying a release

Every tagged release ISO on the Forgejo releases page ships alongside a SHA256SUMS file and a detached signature SHA256SUMS.asc, signed by a dedicated release-signing key (not reused from anything else):

5620 3B86 A110 695A E7F3  1093 4AF3 323D 678E B5E2

The public half is committed at KEYS.asc. To verify a download:

gpg --import KEYS.asc
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

Testing in a VM

A reusable, GPU-accelerated launcher lives at ~/bos-vm/run.sh:

~/bos-vm/run.sh install   # boot the ISO installer (target disk attached)
~/bos-vm/run.sh           # boot the installed system from the disk

It uses KVM + -cpu host, 8 GiB / 8 vCPU, and virtio-vga-gl with -display gtk,gl=on (virgl) — 3D acceleration is essential for a smooth Hyprland session in QEMU. The disk lives on NVMe (not the tmpfs /tmp) to avoid memory pressure.

bos-settings

A GTK4 settings app aiming for GNOME-Settings-style parity: not just editing config files, but live system state and control, so day-to-day machine administration doesn't require a terminal.

Bread-ecosystem TOML configs are edited non-destructively: toml_edit parses the file, changes only the keys a view exposes, and writes it back — preserving comments and any keys the UI doesn't model (calendar passwords, saved-network passwords, model paths). Panels with a daemon behind them (bread, breadbox, breadcrumbs, breadsearch, breadclip) also get live systemd status + Start/Stop/Restart/Logs via a shared service_control widget, not just the config file.

Panel	What it does
About	System info (OS/kernel/CPU/GPU/memory/disk/uptime) + hostname
Network	Wi-Fi scan/connect, Ethernet status, radio toggle
Wi-Fi Profiles (breadcrumbs)	breadcrumbs.toml — settings, saved networks, profiles
Firewall	ufw rules: enable/disable, add/remove, view active rules
Sound	PipeWire output/input device + volume via pactl
Power	Battery status/health, brightness, charge limits (hardware-dependent), TLP profile (read-only)
Date & Time	Timezone, NTP sync toggle
Display (Hyprland)	Connected monitors + open hyprland.lua in editor
Users	Add/remove accounts, change passwords
Wallpaper (breadpaper)	Set wallpaper, drives the pywal-derived accent palette
Bar (breadbar)	breadbar/style.css override, live-reloads on save
Launcher (breadbox)	breadbox/config.toml — launcher contexts
Clipboard (breadclip)	breadclipd service control + "open history"
Notes (breadpad)	breadpad/breadpad.toml — settings, model + ollama, reminders, calendar
File Search (breadsearch)	breadsearch/config.toml — index/search/model + breadmill service
Daemon (bread)	breadd.toml — daemon, lua, modules, adapters, events, notifications
Packages	bakery installed list + updates, pacman system update
AUR	Search via yay; installing opens a terminal (AUR build scripts need review)
Firmware	fwupd device list + updates
Snapshots	snapper list / boot-into (grub-btrfs) / delete

Build standalone:

cargo build --release -p bos-settings
cargo test -p bos-settings        # includes config round-trip tests

The bread ecosystem

Everything below is a separate bakery-distributed project with its own repo and release cadence, baked into /etc/skel at ISO build time so a fresh install has them all with no network round-trip. Some ship more than one binary from a single package — that's noted where it applies. Most have a corresponding bos-settings panel for configuration; this table is about using the app directly.

Desktop shell

Tool	Role	Launch
bread / breadd	Reactive automation daemon — normalises hardware/compositor/power/network signals into events dispatched to Lua modules (~/.config/bread/). Everything else in the ecosystem can subscribe to its events.	runs at login (breadd.service)
breadbar	Top status bar: workspaces, clock, system stats, tray, and the notification daemon — one process, not two	runs at login
breadbox	Application launcher (fuzzy search, per-context results via breadbox-sync)	SUPER+Space
breadlock	Idle lock screen. Also provides breadgreet, the login greeter hosted under cage via greetd — same project, two binaries, one visual identity from login to lock	SUPER+L (via loginctl lock-session, picked up by hypridle); breadgreet runs automatically at boot
bread-theme	The shared palette engine every bread app renders through: fixed dark base colors, with only the accent slots following the current wallpaper's pywal palette. bread-theme generate regenerates the stylesheet; hyprland.lua calls it automatically on wallpaper change.	invoked automatically, rarely run by hand

Productivity

Tool	Role	Launch
breadpad	Quick-capture scratchpad/notes popup with AI classification and optional CalDAV calendar sync	SUPER+U
breadman	The fuller notes manager view (browse/organize) — ships from the same breadpad package as a second binary	SUPER+M
breadclip	Clipboard history. breadclipd is the background daemon that actually records history; breadclip is the GTK4 popup that browses it	SUPER+V / SUPER+Shift+V
breadsearch	Semantic system-wide search (indexes files/notes, embeds locally — CPU/ROCm/CUDA backend configurable). breadmill is its indexing daemon.	via breadbox, or BOS Settings → File Search

System

Tool	Role	Launch
breadcrumbs	Location-aware Wi-Fi profile state machine, with optional Tailscale integration — switches network behavior based on which saved network you're on	CLI, or BOS Settings → Wi-Fi Profiles
breadpaper	Wallpaper manager — sets the wallpaper via awww, generates the pywal accent palette from it, and reloads every bread-theme app	BOS Settings → Wallpaper
breadmon	TUI monitor layout manager (resolution/position/scaling) — the interactive counterpart to BOS Settings' read-only Display panel	breadmon in a terminal
breadshot	Screenshot utility wrapping grim/slurp/wl-copy with Hyprland-aware geometry (multi-monitor-safe region select)	breadshot, or SUPER+Shift+S/C/P

Tooling

Tool	Role	Launch
bakery	CLI package manager for the whole ecosystem — install/update/list, tracks installed binaries + versions independently of pacman	bakery
bos-settings	Unified GTK4 control panel: live system state + control (network, power, firewall, users, packages, firmware, AUR, snapshots) plus non-destructive config editing for every app above	SUPER+,

Keyboard shortcuts

SUPER is the Windows/Cmd key. Press SUPER+/ at any time for this cheatsheet in-session; first boot shows a short welcome (once).

Keys	Action
SUPER+Return	Terminal (kitty)
SUPER+Space	App launcher (breadbox)
SUPER+E / SUPER+B	Files (nautilus) / Browser (zen)
SUPER+U / SUPER+M	Notes (breadpad) / notes manager (breadman)
SUPER+, / SUPER+/	BOS Settings / keybind cheatsheet
SUPER+L / SUPER+N	Lock / log out
SUPER+Backspace	Close window
SUPER+F	Fullscreen
SUPER+I	Toggle floating
SUPER+P	Toggle pseudotile
SUPER+R	Resize mode
SUPER+T	Toggle split direction
SUPER+V / SUPER+Shift+V	Clipboard history (breadclip)
SUPER+Tab	Last window
SUPER+Shift+S/C/P	Screenshot region→file / region→clipboard / screen→file
SUPER+arrows	Move focus
SUPER+Shift+h/j/k/l	Move window
SUPER+Shift+arrows	Resize window
SUPER+1..0	Switch to workspace 1–10
SUPER+Shift+1..0	Move window to workspace
SUPER+[ / ]	Previous / next workspace
SUPER+Shift+[ / ]	Move window to previous / next workspace
SUPER+scroll	Cycle workspaces
SUPER+left/right-drag	Move / resize window with the mouse
Volume / brightness / play-pause / next / prev	Media keys — work even on the lock screen
Calculator key	Opens gnome-calculator

Known limitations

• GPUs: ships the generic Mesa stack — AMD and Intel work out of the box. The NVIDIA proprietary driver is not included; NVIDIA users must install nvidia/nvidia-utils and set the usual Hyprland env vars after install.
• Virtual machines: Hyprland needs GPU acceleration to be smooth. Use virtio-vga-gl + -display gtk,gl=on (virgl); plain software rendering is noticeably laggy.
• Wayland-first: X11-only apps run through XWayland; a few may misbehave.
• Secure Boot: self-signed only, via sbctl — BOS can't ship a Microsoft-signed shim (that needs going through Microsoft's own paid UEFI CA process). Post-install enrolls BOS's own keys automatically, but only when the firmware is already in Setup Mode (no vendor keys installed yet); otherwise it's skipped and you can run sudo sbctl enroll-keys --microsoft && sudo sbctl sign-all -g yourself later (after clearing your firmware's existing keys, if any). The installer writes both an NVRAM entry and the removable EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI fallback either way.
• Disk encryption: full-disk LUKS is available on the installer's "Erase disk" page (Calamares' own checkbox) and on manually-created partitions — BOS ships the matching cryptsetup/mkinitcpio/GRUB wiring so an encrypted install actually boots (LUKS1, since GRUB doesn't support LUKS2 + Argon2id).
• Snapshots assume btrfs: the snapper/grub-btrfs tooling expects the default btrfs subvolume layout the installer creates.

Recovery

An update broke something (system still boots): open BOS Settings → Snapshots and roll back, or pick a pre-update snapshot from the GRUB “snapshots” submenu at boot, then run snapper rollback from the booted snapshot.

The system won't boot (broken GRUB / lost EFI entry):

1. Boot the BOS ISO and open a terminal (SUPER+Return).
2. Mount the installed root and EFI, then chroot:

   mount -o subvol=@ /dev/sdXN /mnt
   mount /dev/sdXP /mnt/boot/efi      # the EFI partition
   arch-chroot /mnt
   

3. Reinstall the bootloader (the same sequence the installer uses):

   grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=BOS --recheck
   grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --removable --recheck
   grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
   

Firmware shows “no boot device”: select EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI from the firmware boot menu — the installer always writes that removable fallback.

Boot architecture notes

archiso keeps the kernel and initramfs outside the squashfs, so the installer stages them explicitly: a shellprocess@kernel step copies the kernel + ucode into the target /boot and writes a stock mkinitcpio preset before the native initcpio module builds the initramfs. GRUB is not installed by Calamares' bootloader/grubcfg modules (they leave the ESP empty in this layout) — post-install.sh runs grub-install (NVRAM and --removable) + grub-mkconfig instead, which is the sequence verified to boot.