Fedora 42 Looks To Make Use Of The "Screen Of Death" DRM Panic Screen

While Fedora 41 isn't even out yet, early feature planning is already underway for Fedora 42 that will debut in the early months of 2025. One of the interesting proposals raised so far is for making use of the new DRM Panic screen functionality for a "Blue Screen of Death" of sorts for better presenting kernel error messages in case of kernel panics.

The DRM Panic infrastructure was merged for Linux 6.10 but for v6.11 and beyond is yet more functionality being wired up. It can present a nice Blue Screen of Death for Linux or a Black Screen of Death. There's also pending work for v6.11 to add monochrome logo support and further out is also the ability to embed QR codes of errors in the DRM Panic screen.

Red Hat's Javier Martinez Canillas showing off DRM Panic in its early form.

The proposal for Fedora 42 that was raised by Red Hat engineers Jocelyn Falempe and Javier Martinez Canillas is to enable DRM_PANIC for the Fedora kernel builds. This proposal also inches Fedora closer toward the long running quest of disabling CONFIG_VT.

"This change will improve the user experience when a kernel panic occurs.

It's also a first step to switch to userspace console, and being able to disable CONFIG_VT in the kernel. VT and fbcon are legacy part of the kernel, that would reduce maintenance burden if we can disable them, and It will also reduce CVE impact, as userspace vulnerabilities are usually less critical."

The proposal still needs to be voted on by FESCo but for those interested the draft in its current form can be found on the Fedora Wiki.