Lapis the Nevrean

... The only catch is that I had to modify my kernel config. I think there isn't a way to make the needed change with just a boot parameter but feel free to correct me.

Assuming you already know what you have to do to recompile your kernel on your distro, you'll have to set the following in your kernel config:

CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DEFERRED_TAKEOVER=n

That's it. That's the only change needed. Recompile and enjoy.

ok but y tho

Purely for nostalgia. The penguin logo flashes on your screen (or is supposed to) early in the boot process for a few seconds, then disappears when Linux pivots from its boot environment to the real filesystem and starts initializing. They are supposed to count the number of CPUs you have, but I think (I might be wrong!) it maxes out at eight penguins. At the very least they're drawn too big to have more than a dozen or so on screen.

Why did they stop showing up?

The reason the boot penguins stopped showing on most distros starting from a few years ago is very silly. The joke is that, actually, yes, they are in fact still being drawn on most distros. Your kernel config almost definitely already sets some or all of these other parameters:

CONFIG_LOGO=y
CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_MONO=y
CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_VGA16=y
CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_CLUT224=y

The plain English explanation of what's happening is that Linux is drawing them to the screen very early in its boot process and then immediately turning them off again as a side effect of changing some of your text console settings. Turning off Deferred Takeover makes Linux change those settings right away instead of the first time it tries to put text on the screen, so the penguins are drawn after the settings are changed and stay a while like you might remember if you used Linux a decade ago.

I want this but I don't know how to "compile kernel"

I really don't want to be That Bird, but this is a can of worms.

Adding a trivial patch to a package on your system is something that's very easy for source-based distros like Gentoo or Nix, or for distros with really robust power user package management like Arch or Void. It's possible to make this change on something like Ubuntu or Debian but then you'll have to manually update your kernel package forever as updates come out (pain in the ass) or do it once and stop getting kernel updates (not recommended). It's not worth it for a cosmetic change.

If you have a beige computer in your closet you can use it to boot an old Knoppix disc if you just want to see what they looked like.