DRM Panic is the Linux kernel infrastructure now supported by most of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display drivers for being able to render a QR code kernel error message or similar when a kernel panic occurs to provide a cleaner interface should your system run into serious problems. An idea has been raised now within the Fedora Linux camp to provide an improved experience around this feature akin to Windows’ “Blue Screen of Death” functionality.
Open-source developer José Expósito proposed today a nicer experience for DRM Panic integration on Fedora. Rather than using DRM Panic with just the kernel log contents being encoded in the QR code displayed when a kernel panic occurs, the proposal is to have a customized Fedora web-page with the encoded QR contents to be shown on that web page. Besides having a more pleasant UI/UX, from this web page the intent would also be to make it easier to report this error to the Fedora BugZilla. Being able to easily pass the kernel log to the Fedora bug tacker could help in making upstream aware of the problem(s) and seeing if other users are also encountering similar panics.
Right now this idea was just raised earlier today as a “request for comments” on the Fedora mailing list.
While a prototype at this point, Expósito already developed a basic web interface for demoing the solution.
The DRM Panic QR error code would then be presented as:
An interesting idea and we’ll see if it takes off within the Fedora camp and/or other Linux distributions.
