Tools
zen — the package manager
A front end, not a package manager: every real operation is an execvp of pacman/makepkg/git/flatpak/curl. libc only.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
zen -sync | pacman-compatible with the official repos. |
zen -aur | AUR fallback: fetches the PKGBUILD, builds and installs it (untrusted third-party build recipes, not signed packages). |
zen -flatpak | Flathub. |
zen --installed-by-zen | List packages installed via the wrapper. |
zen --installed-by-zen --count | How many. |
kryon-pkgcount | Count installed packages. |
Builds are recorded in the ledger at /var/lib/zen/packages; removals are delegated first, then the ledger is pruned back in line.
wizard + kryon-tui
Two front ends, one installer: zen-styled wizard (GTK3) and kryon-tui both produce /tmp/kryon-params.json; what does the work is kryon-install (bash), the only privileged program. It never touches a disk itself — it only runs after the answers are in. The 16 TUI sections and the 10 wizard pages cover the same decision space.
World-map time zone picker
442 zones drawn from exact timezone-boundary outlines (3.6M points, sampled to 40.6K at 0.25°, 0.5%), colour-coded by UTC offset, ocean muted. Every click is tested against real geography: Europe/Warsaw highlights, the ISO keeps the detected zone.
Keyboard-accessible: Tab/arrows/Enter to navigate, Shift for large jumps. Source: apps/wizard/src/tzworld.h, tzworld.c.
kryon-desktop
Supervises the live XFCE session on the ISO and launches the installer once X is really up. Its menu entries are kryon-installer.desktop (graphical) and kryon-installer-tui.desktop (Terminal=true).
The installer in a line
apps/ → make stage → installer-iso/airootfs/ → customize_airootfs.sh → mkarchiso → boot → 16 questions → kryon-install → disk → boot.