Aizome 藍染
Aizome is indigo dyeing: cloth dipped again and again, each dip adding depth. It is also Sekka's desktop, the one Sekka is made for: a Wayland desktop written in Rust on its own toolkit, Sukumo 蒅, taking its ideas from Haiku, NeXTSTEP and IRIX.
Every window wears a tab only as wide as its title, as Haiku's do. A new window of the app you're using opens as another tab on its window. Drop one tab among another window's and the windows stack into a group, from any apps, the tab going where you dropped it. Drag a group's tab to reorder it (Alt-drag for the one showing), and slide a tab along the top edge with Shift.
The menu bar shows the menus of the app you're using, as NeXT's did. Any menu tears off into a palette that stays while its app is focused, or always, once pinned, and palettes are remembered between sessions. Services act on selected text: make a note of it, open it in Sumi, search the web for it, or calculate it.
The Toolchest, from IRIX, opens applications by category, places, Desks and the session. The Deskbar, from Haiku, lists each app with its windows and files its notifications beneath it; drag its strip to stand it at the left or right, and its edge to make it wider, slimmer or icons only. Desks keep work apart, and Super + Ctrl + ↑ shows them all.
Aizome takes as much from modern tiling window managers as from Haiku. Fill the screen with a window or split it left or right from the keyboard, move between numbered Desks and carry windows with you, switch apps and their windows, and open any window's menu with a key for every move. Every command in every app is in the palette, which teaches you its shortcut as you go.
Super is the command key in every app: Super + C copies, in the terminal too. Each keyboard keeps its own modifier keys, Caps Lock and Compose key. Plug one in or pair it, press the key beside its space bar, and Settei suggests where Super should go, so it sits under your thumb on a Mac keyboard and a PC keyboard alike.
Browsers, Electron apps, Zed and Flatpaks open and save files in Aizome's own chooser: Files' sidebar and path bar over the app's window, with its filters and options.
Integer scaling, opaque surfaces, damage-only redraws, and a budget of 4 ms for every frame of the desktop and its apps. Aizome composites on the graphics card, and in software when it has to: the boot menu's recovery entry draws the same session without a GPU driver.
Super + right-click anywhere, or right-click the empty desktop, and the focused app's whole menu opens at the pointer: the app's name in its title strip, every menu as a submenu, Hide and Quit at the bottom. Drag the title strip and it tears off into a palette.
Menus answer the keyboard too: F10 focuses the menu bar, the arrows move, Return chooses.
Super + Space opens the command palette on the screen you're using. It searches every command in the focused app's menus and shows each one's shortcut, so you learn it as you go, along with windows, files, apps, settings and arithmetic. Tab narrows it to one of them.
Start typing in the Toolchest and it becomes the palette.
| Super + Space | The command palette |
|---|---|
| Super + right-click | The focused app's whole menu, at the pointer |
| Super + Alt + Space | The Toolchest |
| Super + Return | The default terminal, Hotaru unless Settei names another, in the Desk's folder |
| Super + C / V / Z | Copy, paste and undo, in every app |
| Super + Tab | Switch apps, then that app's windows |
| Super + Alt + ↑ / ← / → | Fill the screen, or split it left or right |
| Super + Ctrl + Space | The window's own menu, a key for every move |
| Super + Shift + [ / ] | The previous or next tab in a group |
| Super + Ctrl + S | Stack this window with the one behind it |
| Super + Ctrl + 1…9 | Go to a Desk; with Shift, take the window along |
| Super + Ctrl + ↑ | Every Desk |
| Super + Ctrl + F | Full screen |
| Super + H / M / Q | Hide, minimise or quit the app |
| Super + Ctrl + Q | Lock the screen |
Aizome comes with its own apps, each named with a Japanese word for what it's for, and each built on Sukumo: the same menus, the same palette, Night and Day, and every command reachable from the keyboard.
Settings
Every setting, laid out as a Mac's System Settings, and every one searchable.
Software
Install, update, go back and free up space, without editing Nix.
Files
A file manager in NeXT's spirit: Miller columns, and Quick Look on Space.
Text Editor
Markdown styled as you type, and syntax colouring for code.
Notes
Plain Markdown notes in ~/Notes; any one can float as a sticky.
Calendar
Month, week and day, kept as .ics files, with alerts.
Clock
World clocks, alarms that ring with the app closed, a timer and a stopwatch.
Calculator
Basic, scientific and programmer modes, with a paper tape.
Weather
Now, the next 48 hours and ten days ahead, from Open-Meteo.
Disks
Partitions as drawers: every change queued and listed before it runs.
Disk Usage
A sunburst of what fills a disk, the Nix store included.
Activity
Each app with every process it started, together.
Logs
The journal and /var/log, filtered as you type.
Images
PNG, JPEG, animated GIF, WebP, TIFF, SVG and more.
Documents
A PDF reader, drawn by hayro, in Rust.
Media Player
Films, clips and music, with as little work as the machine can do them with.
Dictation
Speak, and the words are typed into the app in front, recognised on this computer.
Terminal
Aizome's own terminal: tabs, split panes and search through scrollback.
Settei is laid out as a Mac's System Settings: a search field, your account, then panes in groups, each pane a form beside them. Every option can be searched, here or from the palette.
Network, Bluetooth, sound, displays, appearance in Night, Day or High Contrast with a focus colour of your choosing, Desks and the Deskbar, the menu bar, power, the lock screen, accounts and keyboards are all here, and Settei sets up each new keyboard you plug in.
Super + Return opens Hotaru, Aizome's own terminal, and programs that need a terminal open in it too. It is built with Aizome's toolkit, not GTK or a web view: native menus, tabs of independently focused split panes, and search through the scrollback. It opens in fish, set up as Omarchy sets it up: a Starship prompt, vi keys, and fzf searches of your history and files.
foot is installed too: choose it in Settei, under General › Default Apps › Terminal.
Aizome has its own login screen, and it lists every desktop you installed: Tatami, Plasma and the others share your account. With GNOME installed, GDM takes its place, since GNOME locks its screen only under GDM.
Yukimi's Desktops page adds and removes desktops later, and chooses which one starts.
On Sekka, choose Aizome in the installer, where it is selected by default, or add it later in Yukimi's Desktops page. On any NixOS system with flakes, add Sekka's flake, import the module and enable it; then pick Aizome on the login screen.
{
inputs.sekka.url = "github:bitemyapp/sekka/nightly";
outputs = { nixpkgs, sekka, ... }: {
nixosConfigurations.example = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
modules = [
sekka.nixosModules.aizome
{ programs.aizome.enable = true; }
];
};
};
}Aizome has a site of its own, aizome.computer, which takes each of its apps, the desktop and its keys further than this page can.