DRM Panic "Screen of Death" To Gain Monochrome Logo Support In Linux 6.11

The DRM Panic handler in Linux 6.10 that is used for presenting a visual error message in case of kernel panics and similar when CONFIG_VT is disabled continues seeing new features. This is the Linux equivalent to Windows' Blue Screen of Death or in the case of DRM Panic can also be a black screen of death. With Linux 6.11, the DRM Panic display can now handle monochrome logos.

With the code in Linux 6.10 when DRM Panic is triggered, an ASCII art version of Linux's mascot, Tux the penguin, is rendered as part of the display.

With Linux 6.11 it will also be able to handle displaying a monochrome image as the logo.

If ASCII art on error messages doesn't satisfy your tastes in 2024+, the DRM Panic code will be able to support a monochrome graphical logo that leverages the Linux kernel's boot-up logo support. The ASCII art penguin will still be used when no graphical logo is found or when the existing "LOGO" Kconfig option is disabled. (Those Tux logo assets being here.)

This monochrome logo support in the DRM Panic handler was sent out as part of this week's drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 6.11 merge window in July.

This week's drm-misc-next material also includes TTM memory management improvements, various fixes to the smaller Direct Rendering Manager drivers, and also the previously talked about monochrome TV support for the Raspberry Pi.