OpenRiot v5.8 — We Are Legion

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” — Banksy, probably writing GTK themes on a ThinkPad

“My crime is that of curiosity.” — The Hacker Manifesto, and also us, poking the OpenBSD kernel with a stick until it tells us why the CPU is stuck at 400 MHz

“Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.” — Marlon Brando, and every cypherpunk who ever ran doas sysctl at 3 AM

“We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us… to fix your display modules.”

🖥️ HDMI: From Mood Ring to Light Switch

The Problem: Our polybar HDMI icon was basically a participation trophy. It detected that you’d plugged in a monitor, showed a pretty icon, set machdep.lidaction=0, and then… did absolutely nothing else. Your external monitor sat there like a brick, wondering why we’d summoned it to a party and then left it at the door. The xrandr --output DP-1 --auto command that actually turns on a display? Never ran. We just assumed Xorg would figure it out. Spoiler: Xorg did not figure it out.

The Fix: We taught the binary to do its one job.

Before After
Icon appears, monitor stays black Icon appears, monitor actually works
“Is it plugged in?” — you, for 20 minutes “Oh, it’s on.” — you, instantly
Toggle to HDMI-only → laptop off, external still off Toggle to HDMI-only → laptop off, external on

We also added a proper 3-state cycle because “on or off” is for light switches, not display managers:

Click the icon → cycle through:

  1. 󰍺 Both — everything on, productivity unlocked
  2.  Laptop Only — external disabled, laptop active (for when you want to pretend the cable is just for charging)
  3. 󰍹 HDMI Only — laptop off, external active (true clamshell mode, your ThinkPad becomes a desktop)

Clicking with no cable plugged in? You get a "No External Monitor" notification instead of a confused no-op. We finally tell you what’s happening instead of making you guess.

When you unplug the cable, the laptop display auto-restores within 10 seconds and suspend gets re-enabled. No more forgetting you’re in clamshell mode, closing the lid, and wondering why your desk fan stopped spinning.

“The HDMI module used to be a mood ring. Now it’s a light switch. A fancy light switch with three positions and a notification system, but still — it actually does things.”

⚡ CPU: Stop Gaslighting the Mouse

The Problem: hw.perfpolicy=auto sounded like a smart idea. Adaptive power management! Save battery! Be green! What actually happened: your Tiger Lake Intel Xe CPU got stuck at hw.setperf=0 like a slug in molasses. The result? Mouse jitter so bad it looked like your cursor was having a panic attack. Keystrokes dropped. Typing felt like sending morse code through a drinking straw. And you couldn’t even fix it with sysctl hw.setperf=100 because the policy held the lock.

The Fix: hw.perfpolicy=high.

No more adaptive governor. No more getting trapped at minimum frequency. Your CPU runs at full tilt when you need it. Yes, it uses more power on battery. Yes, your battery life drops slightly. But you know what else drops? The urge to throw your ThinkPad out a window.

Power Source Before After
AC 400 MHz, mouse seizing Full speed, smooth as butter
Battery 400 MHz, still seizing Full speed, slightly warmer lap

“We told the CPU to stop pretending it was a sloth and start acting like the ferocious tiger it is. Or at least a caffeinated house cat.”

🎨 Tabbar: From Highlighter to Underliner

The Problem: In our zeal to darken GTK4, we cranked the Gnome Text Editor headerbar to #16161e and accidentally turned the active tab into a screaming neon pink highlighter (#bb9af7). It was visible from orbit. Users reported their retinas were suing for damages.

The Fix: Replaced the aggressive background fill with a tasteful 3px solid #7b68ee underline. Think of it as switching from a sledgehammer to a calligrapher’s pen.

🔒 Lock Screens: The Full Riot Makeover

The Problem: Our lock screen collection had gotten a little tired. Some were carryovers from an era when file sizes didn’t matter and composition was whatever the AI spat out first. Others were, shall we say, enthusiastically calibrated for a different audience.

The Fix: Every. Single. Lock. Image. Redone.

  • Cleaner compositions — no more visual noise masquerading as “grunge aesthetic”
  • Smaller file sizes — your SSD thanked us in advance
  • More Riot-y — think cyberpunk skylines and geometric aggression, not 3 AM Tumblr

We’ve also dropped the s (stealth) variants where they were just doubling the bloat. The new collection stands on its own without a safety filter.

“The first rule of riot club: your lock screen shouldn’t require a content warning.” — still true, still relevant, still tattooed on our foreheads.

🛠️ Release Process: Helix or Die

The Problem: make release was launching… vi. Not helix. vi. The crusty old thing that comes with Unix like a bad inheritance. You’d run make release, get a version bump, and then find yourself staring at modal editing from 1976 wondering what you’d done to deserve this.

The Fix: GIT_EDITOR=hx in the Makefile. make release now opens Helix, as the gods intended. No more accidentally committing with a -m flag because you panicked and couldn’t figure out how to exit.

🧾 Files Changed

File What We Did
source/display/hdmi.go Complete rewrite: 3-state cycle, auto-enable external, auto-restore laptop, lid-action management
config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css Swapped pink tab bg for purple underline
Locked/* Entire collection rebuilt: cleaner, smaller, more riot-y
Makefile GIT_EDITOR=hx so releases open Helix, not vi
install/packages.yaml hw.perfpolicy=high (was auto) — fixes Tiger Lake Xe CPU frequency lock

This release is dedicated to everyone who ever plugged in a monitor and stared at a black screen for ten minutes before realizing it wasn’t the cable. To every cypherpunk who debugged at 3 AM. To every hacker who read dmesg until their eyes bled. To Anonymous, who probably already has root on your router.

“We didn’t start the fire. But we did bring marshmallows.”

— The OpenRiot Crew

“So long, and thanks for all the tabs… and the actually-functional HDMI… and the CPU that runs faster than a potato.”