A short look at what you see after booting V.

The deskbar

In the top right corner sits the Deskbar. The button at its top opens the Deskbar menu with your applications and preferences. Below it are the clock and status icons, then the list of running applications. See Deskbar for more.

The workspace

On a live image, first boot drops you into the language picker and a Try / Install screen. Pick your language and keyboard layout there; the choice carries into the installed system when you go through with it. An installed system starts at the login screen, or on the desktop if you turned on automatic login.

Tracker and the file manager

Tracker is the file manager. Folders update live as things change on disk. See The File Manager.

The window manager and app server

Everything you see is drawn by the Vitruvian display server, the app_server, adapted for modern Linux graphics APIs. Windows, menus and controls work as on BeOS, and windows can be stacked and tiled together.

The shell

Below the desktop is a normal Debian-based Linux system, with the usual shell and command line tools. Programs without a graphical interface run as they would on any other distribution.

What you won’t see yet

Filesystem indexing and live queries, which let you search files by attribute, are planned but not implemented yet. The news will announce them.