Linux does dump panics to the screen...depending on your definition of the screen.
What Linux actually does is dump to the system console. Often this is the screen, but can be the serial console (or elsewhere) instead.
However, most people are running X on their desktops. Which means that the console is _not_ on the screen, the frame buffer is. You would need to have Linux dump to the frame buffer in this case and I suspect that this is really what you're seeking.
Lucky for you, there's a project working on this over at Ubuntu. I don't know how far along the project is, but it looks promising and that's where you should start.