The screen you least (most?) want to see is coming to Linux
The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is an ancient computer ritual, told from father to daughter to grandchild. Encountering one on a device you own is throwing down the gauntlet: “You messed up, here's an indecipherable error code: what are you going to do about it?”
And Yes, Yesit's nice to spot them in the wild, thanks, Ars Technica. Point and laugh. Get the system administrator out of bed. Hahaha. Ha. But no, this is tech journalism! This is serious business!
In view of this, version 255 of the Linux-based project systemd has introduced such a thing, while cautioning that, like the rocks we have been made to think with circuits and sorcery, the 'system-bsod' component 'is experimental and subject to change.
Blue screen of life outside Windows
At first glance, an addendum to a single Linux-based project doesn't sound groundbreaking, but as Ars Technica notes, systemd is responsible for system administration on many Linux distributions, large and small.
What about Ubuntu – very much the go-to Linux distro for beginners – or Debian-based variants – including Raspberry Pi OS, and some other distributions that play well on the hardware. Yes, even I have grown into it despises the whole thingso some guidance on what i screwed up and how i screwed up is actually okay.
It may take some time to get to your specific Linux poison (emphasis on poison), but if you do even a little tinkering under the hood, you'll be grateful for the change, and hopefully with your head want to bump into. the wall just a little less.
Elsewhere in systemd version 255 there are essential additions to the data encryption services, including support for TPM 2.0, and quality of life additions to the repart service for automating disk partition management.
But that all pales in comparison, it's so boring, compared to an iconic totem for our reason for being, yeah? Stare into the blue screen and be transported to another dimension.