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.

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.

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