[2][3] It was developed in Havana at the University of Information Science (UCI) by students and professors to provide free and open-source software (FOSS) to inexperienced users and Cuban institutions.

[7] In early 2018, its repositories and download server (repo.nova.cu) was shut down temporarily, with users being told to switch to CentOS, after which Nova resumed development a couple months later.

[6] The goal of Nova was to achieve "sovereignty and technological independence"[4] and to have it installed on all computers in Cuba where Microsoft Windows is still the most widely used operating system.

[2] Hector Rodriguez, Director of UCI, said that "[t]he free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty.

[2][9] Cuba was planning to convert to Nova as its main operating system; once the migration is complete it was intended to be installed in 90% of all work places.