How to disable the cursor when displaying a full screen splash image in Linux

to disable the frame buffer console cursor, you can pass the following to the kernel command line via U-Boot:

setenv std_bootarg vt.global_cursor_default=0
saveenv

You can re-enable it during runtime from Linux command line with:

# echo -e '\033[?25h' > /dev/tty0
# echo 1 > /sys/class/graphics/fbcon/cursor_blink