# 15. Questions

**Where do I download Alloy?**

You do not. You build it. Alloy publishes source and never publishes a binary
image, so what you boot is the thing you configured on your own machine. See
chapter 2.

**Can I build it on a Mac or on Windows?**

No. The build needs Linux with podman, real disk, and a long wall clock. There
is no path to an Alloy ISO from either.

**How do I install software?**

Not with `dnf`. Chapter 7 is the whole answer: pick how much of your machine
the software should reach, and Alloy picks the mechanism from that.

**How do I update?**

Rebuild the image and `bootc switch` to it. Your home directory and your
layered packages survive; you never reinstall. Chapter 8.

**Does Alloy phone home?**

No. Nothing enrolls, checks, or reports without you asking. The update timer is
disabled on any machine installed from a locally built medium, Tailscale and
Syncthing are both off until you enroll them, and the browser makes no network
request on first launch.

**Is it Rust?**

The parts Alloy writes are. The parts it adopts are whatever they are: sway is
C, Tailscale and Syncthing are Go, CUPS is C. Where a competitive Rust option
exists it gets picked, and where one does not the gap is named rather than
papered over.

**Why sway and not Hyprland or niri?**

Alloy wants the i3 model: predictable, workspace-based, no scrolling columns
and no animation. sway is that model, mature, and well packaged, and the whole
sway ecosystem (lock, idle, bar, OSD) fits behind it with no glue.

**Why is there no settings app?**

There is: it is `alloy settings`, and it runs in a terminal. Every action it
takes prints the command it ran, so the console teaches the system instead of
hiding it.

**Can I use bash instead of nushell?**

Yes: `chsh -s /bin/bash`. bash is untouched at `/bin/sh` and `/bin/bash`, so
nothing else on the system changes either way.

**Can I use vim instead of helix?**

Yes, install it. helix is the default because it is useful with no
configuration, which is the same test that picked every other default here. If
you would rather assemble your editor from plugins, nothing stops you.

**Why does my emoji not render?**

No emoji font is shipped. Alloy uses none in its own interface, so it carries
none. Install any emoji font and it works immediately.

**Can I put GNOME or KDE on it?**

You can layer whatever you want, but at that point you are running Fedora with
extra steps. Alloy is the curation; removing it leaves the base.

**Is my data safe if I lose the machine?**

Only if you encrypted the disk at install (chapter 3). Alloy does not encrypt
by default and does not pretend to.

**What happens if the TPM fails on an encrypted machine?**

You type the passphrase you set, or the eight-word recovery phrase the
installer showed you. Both are enrolled precisely because a TPM-only setup has
one failure mode that ends in a lost disk.

**Is there a graphical file manager, launcher, or editor?**

No. yazi, `Mod+D`, and helix are the answers. If you want a graphical file
manager, chapter 7 explains how to add a catalog and install one.

**How stable is this?**

Pre-v0. The base underneath it is Fedora and is as stable as Fedora, but the
console, the installer and the image composition are young, and parts of the
system named in this manual are not built yet. Every one of those is called out
where it comes up rather than described in the future tense.

**Where is the rest of the documentation?**

`docs/` in the repository. `MANIFESTO.md` is what Alloy is and who it is for,
`STACK.md` is every pick with its reasoning and what was rejected, `CONSOLE.md`
is the console's design, `IMAGE.md` is how the image is composed, and
`CONTINUITY.md` is the sync and mesh story. They are written for people working
on Alloy, and they are the honest record of why each default is what it is.