I have found several related discussions but I have not found a solution.

I have five 15.0 systems. Two are bare metal 64-bit. Neither shows the boot penguin logos even when I remove the quiet option.

I have three 15.0 VirtualBox VMs, two 64-bit and one 32-bit. The two 64-bit will show the logos if I remove the quiet boot parameter. The caveat is kernel boot spew. The 32-bit never shows the logos.

The 15.0 change log shows the CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER kernel option was disabled long ago in the 4.19 kernel series and remains that way with the 5.15 series.

I am aware of the fbcon=nodefer boot parameter for when the CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER option is enabled, but I have not found any fbcon=defer parameter for when that build option is disabled.

I have not tried recompiling with that option enabled. I hate to think I need to do that and prefer to think if this was a common problem Pat would long ago have responded with kernel config changes.

I am using GRUB, but I have tested lilo.

I tried the huge kernel with the same results.

Several times I have installed from scratch in a VM with the same results.

On all of the systems I sense something is happening during the period when the penguins previously appeared because there is a notable pause before any boot output begins -- almost as though the kernel/initrd are intentionally pausing rather than display penguins. This pause is how I began to notice the problem.

I expect to see and want the traditional behavior: the quiet parameter disables kernel spew and shows the penguins unless explicitly disabled with the logo.nologo boot parameter.

I am puzzled why I see different results with no consistency.

I am not finding an abundance of similar reports. I presume I am doing something off center that is not obvious to me because of my usage habits.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you!

Edit: June 3
I posted incorrectly about the VMs. I was awake too late and tired. The VMs display the logos with GRUB or lilo when the quiet parameter is not used. Looks like there is consistency after all and the culprit is a regression with the quiet boot parameter. As noted above and confirmed by Hazel, the caveat is kernel boot spew. Pick your devil.

This is not a hill I am going to die on, but I like the logos in the VMs, which are used for tinkering, experimenting, and compiling. The logos remind me how I configured the VM because I do change the number of assigned cores based on the use case. The bare metal systems are fixed hardware and the lack of logos is unimportant. Doesn't change the irritation factor though.

This is something that first came up with the 5.15.x kernels, I think. The "pause" isn't actually a pause; the framebuffer just isn't displaying anything, and nothing appears to happen until the GPU driver takes over. That explains why there are no penguins.

Three questions:

1. Are you using a custom kernel? If so, what are the values of SYSFB_SIMPLEFB and DRM_SIMPLEDRM?
2. What GPUs do the "problem" computers have?
3. What's in the kernel command line?

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I have a similar problem. I'm running Slackware 15 on bare metal and I do have my penguins when I boot without parameters but I then have to put up with loads of "kernel spew" (nice phrase btw). If I opt for a quiet boot, I get no penguins. I'm pretty sure that's not traditional behaviour. SYSFB_SIMPLEFB and DRM_SIMPLEDRM are both off.

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Yes, I first noticed this problem with, as noted above, the 5.15-rc2 kernel. The problem has continued with every kernel release since, up to and including the 5.18.1 kernel.

No custom kernels.

I updated my original post. Seems there is consistency and the culprit is a regression with the quiet parameter.

The two bare metal systems I mentioned both use the i915 video module. Not much of a clue though. In my late night weariness I forgot I had two AMD dual core systems with Nvidia GPUs. Like the other two bare metal system the logos do not appear at all.