What does HackerNews think of xsecurelock?
X11 screen lock utility with security in mind
I found it while going through reddit.com/r/unixporn and looking at other peoples tiling window manager setups.
There is also xsecurelock [1] by Google.
Sort of what https://github.com/google/xsecurelock recommends doing.
Also, xsecurelock doesn't run the input and PAM auth in the same process as the lock, making input bugs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21224179) harmless as well.
I posted a thread asking for advice and did get responses, but I haven't worked up the resolve to go back and try to get it working again. Last I checked, people were just suggesting I try something else, which kind of misses the point of the activity to uses the most secure lock screen that seemed to be available.
I appreciated the help, it just seems like the whole issue should be something provided by a systemd utility that you specify your lock screen for in a config file. I know people hate on it, but systemd really does tend to make it easier if you just kind of want your system fundamentals to stay in the background and just work rather than having to constantly meddle with them.
It's a point of pride to me that I've kept my Linux system going for so long (it's outlived one Windows and two Mac laptops) but it does feel like there's often a very myopic design to a lot of applications. That is, the author often expects you to be willing to context switch out of whatever you were doing for a few hours to learn their software to use it, and doesn't feel like there's any usability problem with the state of affairs. In the case of a lock screen, this was turning into multiple days.
I can only imagine that if things were simpler, it would make it easier to involve more people, bring them on board, and/or just to get stuff done.
Anyway - enough soapboxing.
I couple that with something like the Iron Man schematics videos made by Territory Studio [1] and I've got myself a pretty rad looking screensaver (with minimal effort).
[0] https://github.com/google/xsecurelock
[1] https://www.behance.net/gallery/26009421/AVENGERS-Age-of-Ult...