Glossary

The words this manual uses for parts of bromigOS, in alphabetical order. Some come from the bromigOS story. You never need the story to use the desktop.

AUR

The Arch User Repository: build recipes that Arch Linux users share, for software that isn’t in Arch Linux’s own repositories. Nobody vets them. paru, which bromigOS installs, builds them on your machine. See Install an app from the AUR.

Bar

The strip along the top of the screen. It shows your workspaces, the window title, what’s playing, readings such as processor and memory use, and the clock. See The bar.

Burn-in

The bromigOS emblem: a flame inside a ring of text. It appears on the lock screen, at login, in the boot menu and on the screensaver.

Channel

Which stream of updates your machine follows: stable, rc, edge or dev. See Channels.

Codec call

A short spoken message from the desktop about something important, such as a long job finishing. It shows on screen in a small panel while it plays. You can turn the voice off and keep the panel (Super+Shift+C). The name comes from the radio calls of the story.

Coding agent

An AI program that writes code for you in a terminal. bromigOS shows agents that run in herdr, a terminal workspace manager. The worlds and the Swarm show when an agent is working or needs you.

Colour theme

A theme that changes the colours of everything and shows the den in those colours. bromigOS has eight: Rime, Sunder, Cinder, Lowtown, Highwind, Deepvein, and Wick · Tidewell and Wick · Mire, the den in the two worlds’ colours.

Creation tools

The AI tools that make images, edits, cutouts (a picture with its background removed), 3D models and short video loops. VECTOR uses them. See Creating with AI.

Deck

A full-screen hologram that opens over your windows: the holo deck, the timeline, the Drift map and the Swarm, and with a homelab the lab deck, Mind, Ops theater and the network map. One deck shows at a time. See Holograms.

Den

The background of the Wick theme: a radio room with a desk of old consoles and a window onto space. Parts of it move with your machine’s readings. Colour themes show the den in their own colours.

Den TV

The den’s screens playing your own videos as TV channels: from Jellyfin, Plex, YouTube or a folder, always part-way through something, as if they’d been on all along. Each screen plays its own channel. A TV channel is one of these, not an update channel. The channel guide (Settings › Den TV) lists them all. See The den TV.

The Drift

The part of space where the bromigOS story takes place. Each world is a post somewhere in the Drift, and the Drift map is a chart of it.

Extension

An add-on that somebody shares as a git repository: a theme, a deck, a panel, a tool for VECTOR, a homelab adapter or a command. See Extensions.

Field notes

Your notes, in the FIELD NOTES panel. They save as you type. See Field notes.

Homelab

Computers you run yourself, at home or in a cupboard: servers, a machine with a graphics card for AI, a NAS. bromigOS can show your homelab on the desktop and run AI work on it. “The lab” means the same thing. See Your homelab.

Hologram

A glowing 3D view. VECTOR appears as one, decks are full-screen ones, and the gallery holds 3D models you can turn and take apart. See Holograms.

Hyprland

The window manager bromigOS runs on. It places your windows and runs the keys.

Keeper

The figure who lives in a world’s scene, such as Hollis on the porch in Mire. The keeper works while you work and dozes when you leave.

The lab

Your homelab. bromigos lab is its console. See The lab console.

Live layer

The program that draws the animated background, the screensaver, the decks and the lock-screen animation. Its package is bromigos-live. Turn the background off and on with Super+Shift+B.

The line

Showing VECTOR. In the story VECTOR talks to you over a radio line, so the menu calls showing him “the line”.

The bromigOS menu, which opens with Super+Space. It launches apps and runs everything bromigOS does. See The menu.

Migration

A small script that an update runs to adjust your settings after bromigOS changes. A migration that has to change one of your files keeps a copy of the old one.

nolgia

A paid cloud service for AI images, video and 3D models. bromigOS can only use it once you sign in to it, and then only where you allow the cloud or choose nolgia for a creation tool. See Creating with AI.

Panel

A readout on the desktop, under your windows: SYSTEM, NETWORK, STORAGE, WORKBENCH, FIELD NOTES, SHORTCUTS, and others you can turn on. bromigOS’s own files sometimes call them widgets. See Panels.

Peripheral module

Optional support for a device’s extra features, such as a keyboard’s macro keys, dial and lighting. See Keyboards and peripherals.

Post

In the story, a relay station somewhere in the Drift. Each world shows the view from one post.

Primary monitor

The monitor where the background, the panels and VECTOR appear. Choose it in Settings › Displays.

Private overlay

Settings you keep encrypted alongside your dotfiles, such as addresses or keys. bromigos private edit edits them and decrypts them again. It needs the sops and age packages. bromigOS decrypts them when you sign in, and again whenever the encrypted file changes, such as after you pull your dotfiles. Without your age key, nothing happens.

Keyboard shortcuts

The bromigOS Manual