NAVI // FAQ
The things people actually ask us about navi — answered straight. If your question isn't here, ask in the community or open an issue (see the last question).
No, not at all. Your navi computer belongs to you, and we are not interested in collecting data of any kind. We're only interested in giving you a fun, aesthetic Linux distro. If age verification or similar ever made its way into upstream components, we would strip it out. We believe in online privacy and user agency — anything you connect your navi machine to in the cloud is done willingly, opt-in, never opt-out.
navi is a Linux distro from xvoidsx, a two-person collective: Raven on programming and integrations, Ryoko on design. It's Debian-based and Wayland-only, built to make computers fun again — with the smallweb and local AI agents baked in, not bolted on. The current stable release is 1.7 "mika"; the rolling development channel is "eiri" on the way to 2.0.
Yes — the OS is free, on any machine, and it stays that way. navi-machine sales fund the work and upstream contributions (to Debian and the projects navi relies on). Buying hardware is how you support navi, never a requirement for using it.
No. navi carries no third-party advertising — not on our sites, not in the OS, ever.
Ordinary PCs via the installer ISO, and the Pi-based navi machines we sell. Old hardware is first-class here, not an afterthought: the test bench is 2014–2016 era machines, and if the installer works on those, it'll work anywhere. ARM gets its own image per architecture.
Brave as the default browser (Firefox ships too), smallweb clients like amfora for Gemini and glyyph for Nostr, and agents out of the box — Ollama, opencode, goose, herdr, and more. The naviApps store adds the rest, from webapps to native apps to agents.
A small computer based on the Raspberry Pi, built and sold by xvoidsx. It's the easiest way into navi — it arrives ready, running the same free OS anyone can install themselves. Machine revenue is what keeps navi independent.
Yes. Local models come first through Ollama, and your own keys for cloud backends live in ~/.config/navi/agents.env. Nothing in navi requires a subscription — local is the default, your keys are the option.
Yes — navidroid, our minimal Android launcher. It runs on any Android device, no custom ROM, no flashing: the navi vision on the phone you already own.
Two channels: stable ("mika", versioned releases like 1.7) and rolling ("eiri", where 2.0 is taking shape). The updater keeps your machine current on whichever channel you're on.
Come find us: the navi Discord community, issues on github.com/xvoidsx/navi, or the fediverse at neighborli.xyz. Bug reports, ideas, and contributions are all welcome.