I’m still using the (ancient) Squeeze system (lyrion.org these days). Default setup for new things are a raspberry with a DAC or digital out (picoreplayer), feeding into active speakers. It’s open source, just works, with plugins for almost anything and has all the multiroom sync etc. You don’t even need a separate server unless you want to, just add some disk to one of the raspberries and let i be your media server.

I’m not sure, there can always be other issues. But note that closing the window is not the same as terminating the application. When you close the window, the application gets a signal that it usually handles as cleaning up and shutting down. But if it is hanging, that task is not performed and resources are still held.

Way back at the dawn of time, there was a regular issue with low quality applications that would run XGrabKeyboard() (or XGrabPointer()), and then get stuck without releasing it again. If you can, try to log in over the network from another machine and kill application processes one by one until it releases? It’s most likely the video game (or library used by it) that has gotten stuck.

To be honest, it is also a bit about productivity. Doing full remote will in time become less efficient, at least I notice an uptick in how smooth interactions go after we have been physically together a bit more. There is no reason why it has to happen all the time, though.

But the task for management should really be to make people want to come to the office. I.e. make it a better place to be than at home, and ensure commutes are short and flexible. In my team, the typical commute is about 10 minutes, and most of us will go to the office to meet, have lunch, and get a break from home. We are social creatures, and meeting people is good for us.

I hate to disappoint you, but the software part controlling your phone is the baseband processor. No matter what you replace and root, that one is in control and you cannot in any legal way replace it.