The Alexandrian Moment

For giggles, I put a short story up as an Amazon Kindle offering: The Alexandrian Moment

Workaround gamescope invisible cursor bug in Ubuntu 26.04

The bug

On Ubuntu 26.04 (resolute, which ships gamescope 3.16.20), launching a game through gamescope with --force-grab-cursor can make the mouse pointer vanish. Upstream: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/2180

Dropping --force-grab-cursor avoids the bug, but that flag is what confines the pointer to the game window on a multi-monitor setup, so removing it is not an acceptable fix here.

A Workaround

Only one thing worked for me: build the older questing gamescope 3.16.15 and run it instead of resolute's 3.16.20.

Everything else raised on #2180 and related threads failed or did not apply:

• --hide-cursor-delay 99999 — no effect.
• WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1 — no effect.
• Borderless-windowed / backend switching — unreliable.
• winecfg / protontricks "capture mouse in fullscreen" — Proton/Wine only, so no help for a native-Linux game.
• Downgrade further, to 3.14.x — unnecessary; 3.16.15 sufficed.

Both 3.16.15 and 3.16.20 are 3.16.x, so the regression landed in a commit between those two tags.

Procedure for Agents

Build gamescope 3.16.15-2 from Ubuntu questing sources and install, self-contained, under ~/Stow/gamescope-questing. No root, no system changes. resolute dropped wlroots 0.18 (ships 0.19), which 3.16.15 needs — Debian patch 0006 wires gamescope to the system libwlroots-0.18-dev, and the Debian tarball strips the vendored subprojects/wlroots — so build wlroots 0.18 from its matching Ubuntu source into the same prefix.

Sources

All from the Ubuntu archive. Confirm each download's checksum against the Checksums-Sha256 field of its .dsc.

• gamescope 3.16.15-2, pool/multiverse/g/gamescope/
  https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/questing/gamescope
• wlroots 0.18.2-3 (source behind questing's libwlroots-0.18-dev), pool/universe/w/wlroots/
  https://packages.ubuntu.com/questing/libwlroots-0.18-dev

Prerequisites

Install both packages' Build-Depends (see each .dsc). gamescope's libwlroots-0.18-dev is supplied by the wlroots build below; wlroots' libcairo2-dev is needed only for examples, which are disabled.

Build

Prefix for both: PREFIX="$HOME/Stow/gamescope-questing". Apply each package's Debian quilt patches before configuring:

while read p; do patch -p1 -i debian/patches/$p; done < debian/patches/series

1. wlroots 0.18.2 -> $PREFIX

meson setup build --prefix="$PREFIX" --libdir=lib --buildtype=release \
  -Dexamples=false -Dwerror=false
ninja -C build install

Installs libwlroots-0.18.so, headers under include/wlroots-0.18, and lib/pkgconfig/wlroots-0.18.pc.

2. gamescope 3.16.15 -> $PREFIX

Two source edits after patching:

• src/meson.build: patch 0006 hardcodes /usr/include/wlroots-0.18 in reshade_include. Replace with join_paths(get_option('prefix'), 'include', 'wlroots-0.18').
• src/meson.build: vcs_tag() has no git tree, so the --version banner is blank. After gamescope_version_conf = configuration_data() add gamescope_version_conf.set('VCS_TAG', '3.16.15').

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig:\
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:\
/usr/lib/pkgconfig:\
/usr/share/pkgconfig"
meson setup build --prefix="$PREFIX" --libdir=lib --bindir=bin --buildtype=release \
  -Dpipewire=enabled -Denable_openvr_support=false \
  -Dcpp_link_args='-Wl,-rpath,$ORIGIN/../lib' \
  -Dc_link_args='-Wl,-rpath,$ORIGIN/../lib'
ninja -C build install

Choices, matching the Debian rules except where noted:

• -Dpipewire=enabled -Denable_openvr_support=false from Debian rules.
• bindir=bin, libdir=lib (Debian uses /usr/games) so the tree suits a stow package.
• PKG_CONFIG_PATH puts $PREFIX first so the staged wlroots-0.18 wins.
• rpath $ORIGIN/../lib lets gamescope find its bundled libwlroots-0.18.so both in the raw prefix and after stowing.

Verify

readelf -d "$PREFIX/bin/gamescope" | grep RUNPATH        # $ORIGIN/../lib
ldd "$PREFIX/bin/gamescope" | grep wlroots               # resolves inside $PREFIX
"$PREFIX/bin/gamescope" --version                        # gamescope version 3.16.15

Time Machine Quick Reference

The Spertilo Live Music Time Machine is a great little device, with a delightful interface. It streams live shows from archive.org and phish.in, especially Grateful Dead for 1966–1995.

I use it frequently but I infrequently need to comb their site/FAQ/etc to find button combinations for some Micro edition features. Here's a quick reference:

Micro model reference only. No Bluetooth. No Experience Mode.

Setup

• Audio: analog out via 1/8" headphone jack. Plug into powered speakers, an amp, or earphones.
• Power: USB cable, lower right corner.
• WiFi (first boot, or after a failed connection):
  • Turn Year to scroll network names; red name with ">" is the candidate. Press Select to choose.
  • Hidden network: choose HIDDEN_WIFI and enter the name manually.
  • Passkey entry: turn Year to move the cursor, Day to jump 10 characters, Select to enter a character, DEL to erase, Stop to finish.
  • Credentials persist until the network changes.

Play a Show

1. Stage a date with the Month, Day, Year knobs. Venue appears if a tape exists; no venue, no show.
2. Press Select. The best tape plays.
3. Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind, FFwd behave as expected.

• Hold Select: cycle through every tape on the staged date; release to play the one displayed. White id = soundboard, red id = audience.
• Rew / FFwd: previous / next track.
• Stop: halt playback, return play head to start of show.
• Staged and selected dates are independent: browse while listening.
• Set break: 10 minutes of silence between sets. FFwd skips it.

Knob Presses

Knob	Press
Month	Dim the screen
Day	Jump to next date with a tape
Year	Today-in-history for staged year; press again to cycle years with tapes

Volume: dim the screen (press Month), then Rewind lowers and FFwd raises volume. Turn any knob to wake the screen.

Screen

• Top: staged date, MM-DD-YY.
• Below: venue/city/state, alternating with tape id (scrolls if long).
• Middle: current and next track, red text.
• Bottom: selected date, MM-DD-YYYY. Bottom right: playstate.
• Screen sleeps after 30 minutes idle. Any knob or button wakes it.

Menu — Hold Power

Hold Power until the menu appears. The site says 3 seconds in one place, 5 in another; hold until you see it.
A short Power press stops playback and dims the screen.

• Collections: add artists. Spell the collection name with the Day and Year knobs; once under 30 matches, pick from the list, choose Finished. Device restarts.
• WiFi: force reconnection to a different network.
• Update Code: wait ~1 minute for the "Press Select Button" prompt, then press Select. No prompt, no update.
• Update Firmware: runs on its own. Update encouraged; pre-update units skip tracks since archive.org went https-only (March 2024).
• Factory Reset: restore shipped software.

Current versions as of April 2024: software 2.1.3, firmware 1.23.0 20240408.

Troubleshooting

• Dead on arrival: reseat both ends of the power cable, plug in, wait 10 seconds, unplug, plug back in.
• Connected but silent: check the audio connection.
• Phish silent: run Update Code.
• Tape choice: default ranks soundboard first, then favored taper, downloads, track count, named tracks, rating. Hold Select to override.

Disabling Ubuntu Tile Groups via gsettings

In Ubuntu 25.10, clicking window B (to focus it) can unexpectedly raise a sibling window A above an overlapping window C. This happens because A and B are in the same Tile Group — a spatial grouping the Ubuntu Tiling Assistant forms when windows are snapped/tiled edge-to-edge. The extension's "Raise together" rule raises the entire tile group whenever any member is raised, so raising B drags A upward too. The fix is to disable that group-raise behavior while keeping tiling itself intact:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.tiling-assistant enable-raise-tile-group false

To verify it took, run gsettings get org.gnome.shell.extensions.tiling-assistant enable-raise-tile-group — it should print false.