OpenRiot v5.9 — The Crystal Clear Resolution
“JPEG is a lossy format for lossy people. We are not lossy people.” — Ancient OpenBSD proverb, probably carved into a workstation somewhere
Release Overview
OpenRiot v5.9 is what happens when you look at your lock screen and realize it looks like it was rendered through a potato filter. We’ve swapped every last .jpg for crisp, high-quality .png files that let you count individual pixels of cyberpunk neon like a connoisseur. We’ve also fixed the calculator (Super+=) which was failing during install because it couldn’t find its own config directory — a bit like showing up to a math competition and forgetting how to hold a pencil.
Total changes: 1 existential revelation about image compression, 1 calculator that actually knows where its house keys are.
🖼️ The PNG Migration: We Did It For the Pixels
The Problem: Our lock screens and desktop backgrounds were living in .jpg format. This was fine in 2003, but this is 2026 and your 4K monitor deserves better than blocky artifacts and chroma subsampling that makes red look like it has a personal vendetta against edges. The Locked/ folder had .jpg files. The backgrounds/ folder had files named riot_01.jpg through riot_14.jpg. It was inconsistent, compressed, and frankly — we’d outgrown it.
The Fix: Every single image has been re-exported as high-quality .png. But we didn’t stop there. We also ditched the riot_ prefix on desktop backgrounds so they now use the same clean numbering as the lock screens:
| Old Name | New Name | Location |
|---|---|---|
Locked/01.jpg |
Locked/01.png |
Lock screen |
Locked/01s.jpg |
Locked/01s.png |
Stealth lock screen |
backgrounds/riot_01.jpg |
backgrounds/01.png |
Desktop wallpaper |
| … | … | … |
Your Super+W rotations and Super+L lock screens are now rendered in lossless glory. The files are larger, yes. We hear your SSD crying. But look at those gradients. Look at them.
“Quality is remembered long after file size is forgotten. —Someone who has never had to
git pusha 6MB PNG.”
🔢 The Calculator: Qalculate’s Housing Crisis
The Problem: Super+= launches rofi-calc, which depends on qalculate. During installation, the build process for rofi-calc would fail because ~/.config/qalculate/ didn’t exist yet. Qalculate was like that friend who needs you to create a Netflix profile for them before they can watch anything. The result: no calculator, no quick math, and users having to open a terminal like savages to multiply two numbers.
The Fix: The installer now creates ~/.config/qalculate/ before attempting to build rofi-calc. It’s one line. It took us this long. We’re not proud, but we’re here now.
“Give a man a directory, and he’ll calculate for a day. Teach a man to mkdir, and he’ll never starve for math again.”
🧾 Files Changed
| File | Nature of Change |
|---|---|
Locked/* |
All .jpg files replaced with high-quality .png files |
backgrounds/* |
All riot_*.jpg files replaced with *.png, renamed to match numbering |
source/backgrounds/backgrounds.go |
Default background changed from riot_00.jpg to 01.png |
source/lock/cache.go |
Cache build scripts updated to glob .png instead of .jpg |
install/packages.yaml |
rofi-calc build now pre-creates ~/.config/qalculate/ |
install/openriot |
Rebuilt binary reflecting all changes |
🗣️ Final Words
“We compressed our images so you wouldn’t have to compress your disappointment. Your lock screen is now as sharp as your wit — or at least as sharp as the wit of whoever wrote this release note.”
This release is dedicated to every user who ever looked at their desktop background and thought, “I can see the macroblocks.” We saw them too. We fixed them. Your pixels are now safe.
Upgrade with the usual command:
curl -fsSL https://OpenRiot.org/setup.sh | sh
— The OpenRiot Crew
“So long, and thanks for all the fish… and the lossless wallpapers.”