Commuters at a Stockholm station were treated to an unusual sight: a wall-sized digital signage display showing GNU GRUB, the Linux bootloader, instead of the expected advertisement. The screen, spotted by a Register reader, presented the familiar boot menu with options for UEFI firmware and something labeled DMS, alongside the standard GRUB prompts to edit commands or drop into a command line.
As the Register notes, those interactive options are of little use without a keyboard, and no one on the escalators seemed inclined to help. The display was likely mid-reboot and would probably try to boot again on its own. It is a harmless but striking example of what happens when embedded systems fail in public.
GRUB has appeared in this column before, most notably on a UK bus after a filesystem error. This Stockholm sighting is a wall-sized variation on that theme, and a reminder that even polished digital signage runs on software that occasionally shows its bootloader face. The Register jokes that while the Linux desktop may not have arrived, bork is alive and kicking in the open-source world.