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How can I disable the purple "Ubuntu" splash screen that displays at boot before the login screen has loaded? I'd prefer to just see plain text scroll by.

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Quote from /usr/share/doc/plymouth/README.Debian (from package plymouth version 0.8.2-2ubuntu2, which is the one installed on Ubuntu 10.04):

There are two methods to disable the splash screen. Both have the same effect. Your boot will show such messages as are emitted by the starting services, and will still be able to prompt if needs be.

  1. Remove all of the plymouth-theme-* packages from your system, including the text ones. Plymouth will remain installed to permit boot-time prompts.

  2. Remove splash from the kernel command-line. You can do this per-boot, or make it permanent by changing the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub.

The second method also requires running update-grub as superuser, after editing that file.

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  • Thanks, I never would have guessed it was called "plymouth". The second method worked great for me. – ændrük Oct 2 '10 at 22:17
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    I've removed both quite and splash from my GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and I still get a blank, plain, purple screen while the kernel is loading. Once the kernel is loaded and system services are starting then the splash goes away. – Buttons840 Jun 16 '11 at 18:10
  • there is no /etc/default/grub on my system, I think because of the move to grub2, so where can I set GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT when using grub2 ? – Jay _silly_evarlast_ Wren Nov 15 '11 at 16:08
  • @Jay_silly_evarlast_Wren After editing /etc/default/grub you need to run sudo update-grub to apply the changes to the boot loader. See the ubnutu grub help wiki. /etc/default/grub exists on my ubuntu 12.10 installation. – doug65536 Apr 3 '13 at 19:26
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    @TheGuywithTheHat "per-boot" = edit the GRUB command-line by pressing e at the GRUB menu. – Riccardo Murri Oct 31 '17 at 15:15
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Temporarily disable splash

You can edit the boot entries in the menu from within GRUB to temporarily disable the splash screen.

Try the following: Select the entry, press the key to edit this entry (it should be e), go to the kernel/linux line and remove quiet splash, then press F10 to boot.

Here are two screenshots from a VM to show you how it should look like:

enter image description here

Permanently disable splash

The permanent equivalent was already quoted in Riccardo Murri's answer:

  1. Remove splash from the kernel command-line. You can do this per-boot, or make it permanent by changing the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub.

... followed by update-grub as superuser.

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