Customizing Splash Screen on Intel NUC 12 Extreme in Linux

 So the logo that shows by default on the NUC 12 Extreme is a skull.  I don't personally find this offensive or anything like that, but it also isn't really my style.  Since I run Pop OS!, I would like it to use that logo.

You can't just update the splash screen logo without updating the firmware, and you need to download an actual firmware file for that.  One would assume that should be simple enough, but...  It was quite a wild goose chase to actually find the BIOS update file for downloading, so let me share the link here.  

There is an article discussing the process here, which has links to the other tools you need, which include iChLogoLnx64 and iFlashVLnx64.

Thankfully, these tools include Linux versions!

I downloaded these and extracted them with mc, and then used chmod 755 to make them executable.  I didn't move them to /opt/bin or anything like that since I probably won't use them all that often.  

You'll also need a logo, which you can find pretty much anywhere online, though there are restrictions on the size and format, which are detailed in the PDF that accompanies the iChLogo tool.  

I used this Pop OS! icon, which did give me a warning about being too large, but created the file anyway.  Since it's only over by about 100 each way, it may be that I'm only losing transparent space.  

I actually did this in two passes, one to delete the logo from the file I downloaded, and another pass to insert my logo into the logoless file.  

Next, I used the iFlashV utility to write my new BIOS file with the logo.  Note that this one must be run as root for obvious reasons.  

Next, I rebooted to try it out, and you can see the relatively entertaining result!

I thought the outside was supposed to be transparent...

Next up, to change the physical skull logo on the front of the case!