A 10-year retrospective on the Arcan project, a long-running open source display server and desktop environment framework that began around 2003. The author traces the project's three phases: 'Fun and Games' (building an arcade emulator frontend called Gridle and an Amiga-inspired desktop called AWB); 'Challenge the Established Order' (building a tiling window manager called Durden, a binary visualization tool called Senseye, a VR desktop called Safespaces, a spreadsheet-like shell environment called Pipeworld, and a terminal replacement called Cat9); and the current 'Asylum' phase. The post is also a partial farewell, as the author expresses disillusionment with AI hype, crypto culture, and the commercialization of open source, announcing plans to scale back the final phase and eventually step back from public work.
