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Show HN: Play Pokémon to unlock your Wayland session (github.com)

124 points by anajimi ↗ HN
Hello everyone!

I've created a gameboy emulator to unlock my Wayland session and wanted to share this project to everyone here!

I've been a Linux enthusiast since I was a kid. What always captivated me was the freedom to customize my system exactly the way I wanted. With Wayland, we've reached an incredible level of performance. It's like turning your operating system into a video game! I've always been fascinated by the blend of fun and the serious, technical nature of an OS. That’s what inspired me to create this project.

I started by studying Wayland, its protocol and how to build a compositor. Then I became particularly intrigued by the concept of a locker, which reminded me a bit of an escape game. That’s when I thought: how cool would it be to solve a puzzle to unlock your session, instead of just typing a password? Since I’ve worked with emulators in the past and I’m a huge Pokémon fan, the idea of building the puzzle around that game came to me instantly!

Technically, the locker code and the wayland protocol have been implemented from scratch ( using EGL and wl_keyboard_listeners ). My locker runs a version of the gbcc emulator modded by myself. This emulator waits for one precise value to be set in a given memory address.

I have modded the Pokémon game to my needs: when the password is good, I put the good value in the good memory address so the emulator knows it needs to unlock the session.

Hope you will appreciate this project!

20 comments

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d3Xt3r
Ah, goody. Looks like I found the only other Wayland user on HN. ;)

You should also post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44837981

righthand
There are dozens of us…dozens!
jchw
On the KDE side, Wayland has been going pretty well. Wayland sessions make up 82% of all sessions with telemetry enabled.

https://blogs.kde.org/2025/03/15/this-week-in-plasma-file-tr...

For me the real conundrum was SwayWM vs KDE Wayland rather than any X.org session; I really felt like SwayWM was a good upgrade from i3wm and gave me a better desktop session with much less hacks. Hope to see wlroots push forward and support some of the newer Wayland protocols, it has started to fall behind a little bit, but I think it's good for alternative desktops.

Y_Y
Cool kids don't allow telemetry. I think that any software whose userbase isn't totally oblivious will have severe selection effects if you use data obtained by spying.
yjftsjthsd-h
> Wayland sessions make up 82% of all sessions with telemetry enabled.

That is a significant caveat.

juujian
The trick was to switch to AMD (screw NVIDIA on Linux).
techjamie
I'm on Wayland with NVIDIA, it took longer to get there but it does work perfectly fine.
heresie-dabord
I count for at least two!

Wayland in Raspberry Pi OS (labwc)

Wayland in Debian: Bookworm (Sway), Trixie (labwc)

alex-moon
I use Wayland! I like it a lot and I think that it's a sensible way to take window management in the 21st century. However, it's clearly not _mature_ yet (which is understandable - it's very new!). My use case specifically is a bit unusual:

1. I'm on an NVIDIA graphics card - this struggles a lot, I won't lie, and it's really odd issues which are difficult to track down. 2. I'm running Deskflow for virtual KVM - this is using literally someone's hand-rolled attempt to hack Wayland to make it work - it manages the most important element: my keyboard and mouse are shared between my Linux desktop and my MacBook - but much of the incidental functionality, most notably copy-pasting and repeating held keys, doesn't work at all. Mod keys seem a bit fucky as well.

That said, I'm committed - am excited to see the tech honed in the coming years.

DiabloD3
Ironic you say that, because I also use Wayland.
skerit
Incredible that we're getting something like this before a plain good old screensaver
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(comment deleted)
rtsang1
For a moment, I thought the punchline was that users needed to play through the game and clear the elite four to unlock their session.
Babkock
Also thought this. Never made it that far on the original
anajimi
Very cool idea, I may implement a hardcore mode in the future just for fun lol.
OsrsNeedsf2P
Heavy customization is important to me on the Linux desktop. This project has given me a lot more faith in Wayland than 5 years of hearing debates about it.
yjftsjthsd-h
FWIW, as a ... Wayland skeptic/pessimist¹, screen locking does seem to be one place where things actually work and seem more sensible than under X.

¹ It always seems to be just around the next corner. Sixteen years on, it would be nice if we could have feature parity.

skyzouwdev
That’s a really creative take on session locking. I can see it being both fun and surprisingly secure — anyone trying to unlock your machine would need to know the game and the exact sequence. Do you see this as more of a novelty project, or could it be adapted for practical use in real security setups?
anajimi
Thank you for your kind comment! To be honest I saw this as a novelty project, however I think it could be more secure than a password locker, at least in some cases where the password is weak.