Howto Change Plymouth themes (initial splash screen) in Ubuntu 10.04

Plymouth splash screen is the initial splash screen at boot-up.Ubuntu 10.04 uses Plymouth instead of xsplash to manage the fancy boot graphics.If you want something different,you can try following method to change the default Plymouth splash screen.

Update: There’s a GUI called Plymouth Manager for managing plymouth splash themes, click here to continue

First,you can run this in terminal (or search “plymouth-theme” in System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager) to see available themes in the default repository:

apt-cache search plymouth-theme

Then,choose your favorite theme and use this command to install (here I choose the plymouth-theme-ubuntustudio package ):

sudo apt-get install plymouth-theme-ubuntustudio

Now run the command:

sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth

and it should lists currently installed themes and you can type the number and hit enter to choose one you want to use.

wraith@wraith-desktop:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth
There are 3 choices for the alternative default.plymouth (providing /lib/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth).

  Selection    Path                                                               Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.plymouth               100       auto mode
  1            /lib/plymouth/themes/solar/solar.plymouth                           10        manual mode
  2            /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.plymouth               100       manual mode
* 3            /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntustudio-logo/ubuntustudio-logo.plymouth   100       manual mode

Finally,execute following command to apply changes and restart your machine to see the new cool splash screen!

sudo update-initramfs -u

Note:Plymouth does not reliably work with nVidia drivers and during bootup a blank screen may result for several seconds.

Related posts:

1. Plymouth Manager – GUI tool to change initial splash screen themes in Ubuntu
2. Manager Gnome Plymouth splash theme using Splash Screen Manager
3. Install Mac OS X boot-up splash screen theme in Ubuntu 10.04
4. Install Latest Stable Plymouth Manager and plenty of Themes in Ubuntu
5. Install MIB-Ubuntu Plymouth theme in Ubuntu