It surprised me that Linux 6.12's QR code generator is written in Rust and enabled in at least Arch and Fedora.

Why does the kernel need a QR code generator?

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-DRM-Panic-QR-Code

Oh that's pretty nifty. It's always been a pita to get data (logs, traces, metadata etc) off of a crashed system. This is less human readable, but any human that wants to read it will want the raw data anyway. Way easier to do this than try to run photos of a screen through OCR.

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A QR code can capture 3k of data, you can capture a lot of context and details in that, particularly if you apply a little bit of compression (and the kernel has compression algorithms embedded in it). More than can be captured on a screen normally, without it zooming out of sight.

An 80x25 ascii display carries 2000 characters which isn't shabby. But yeah, a lot harder to photograph.

Would most people rather have a cell phone picture of the screen for debug logs, or a QR code that has those logs ready to be scanned and copy/pasted?