OpenRiot v7.9.50 — The First Characters Come Back

“You locked the screen. You typed the passphrase. The machine said Wrong. You typed it again. Wrong. Third try, it worked — same passphrase, same fingers, same machine. The construct wasn’t rejecting you. It was eating the first characters while X11 finished grabbing the keyboard. We fixed that in v7.9.31. Then we fixed something else and the fix walked out the door. It’s back. Auto-repeat dies before i3lock. Auto-repeat returns when you unlock. The first characters stay yours. The Turing Police would blame your typing speed. We blame the regression and restore four lines.” — The OpenRiot Crew, after the lock screen stopped lying, v7.9.50


Release Overview

Two things this release: the lock screen stops eating keystrokes again, and the desktop gets eight new sci-fi walls.

The lock path regressed after v7.9.43 removed the pre-lock sleep. That sleep was the wrong fix. The right fix — xset r off before i3lock, xset r on after unlock — went with it. Password attempts that should have worked were failing on the first try because auto-repeat and the async X keyboard grab were still racing your fingers. Restored. No sleep. No fork games. Just quiet the keys while the grab settles.

The wall pool grows from 42 to 50. Numbers 43 through 50 are sci-fi inspired — neon wastes, dead channels, constructs that remember where they were standing. The sprawl looks better when you leave the machine alone.

Total changes: lock keystroke fix restored, eight sci-fi backgrounds.


⌨️ Lock Screen: Auto-Repeat Stays Dead

i3lock calls XGrabKeyboard when it starts. The grab is asynchronous. While it settles, X auto-repeat will fire phantom events for any key still held or still repeating. Those events land in the password buffer as garbage. Result: “Wrong!” on a passphrase you typed correctly.

v7.9.31 fixed it:

  1. xset r off before i3lock
  2. i3lock -n (nofork — still present)
  3. xset r on after unlock, and on start failure

v7.9.43 removed the sleep that was papering over timing. Good. It also left auto-repeat alone. Bad.

source/lock/lock.go now kills repeat before the lock, restores it after. Fast typists get a clean buffer. The machine stops gaslighting you about your own password.


🖼️ Sci-Fi Walls: 43 Through 50

Eight new desktop backgrounds in backgrounds/:

File Notes
backgrounds/43.webp50.webp Sci-fi inspired walls
  Desktop pool: 42 → 50

Same format as the rest of the set. Same resolution path. The construct has more places to look while you’re away. No lock-screen cache rebuild required for these — they are desktop walls, not Locked/ entries.

The Turing Police wallpaper their terminals with stock photos of mountains and call it “brand compliance.” We paint the neon wastes and call it home.


🧾 Files Changed

File Change
source/lock/lock.go Restore xset r off before i3lock;
  xset r on after unlock and on start
  failure
backgrounds/43.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/44.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/45.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/46.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/47.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/48.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/49.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall
backgrounds/50.webp NEW — sci-fi desktop wall

🗣️ Final Words

“The first three characters were never wrong. The grab was late. The repeat was loud. We quieted the keys, locked the screen, and let the sprawl paint itself in science fiction. Fifty walls. One passphrase that works on the first try. The Turing Police would open a ticket about ‘user education.’ We reopened the lock path and closed the ticket ourselves.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.50