Comment # 4 on bug 1027702 from Peter Gumbrell

Rather than shouting into the wind, I'll use this rare drive-by of Bugzilla to
repost a recent reply on the openSUSE misery list on this subject
[https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2017-03/msg00086.html]:

(Perhaps a video made of the boot-up would more amply demonstrate my situation
but I don't have any ideal video upload solutions. Maybe I can try later on
YouTube.)

"I'd be curious to know if anybody really has a Plymouth boot under openSUSE
that they consider satisfactory aesthetically?

This 'flicker-free' boot notion was much parroted a few years ago and I've
found personally that with every distribution release since, on multiple
machines with different graphics cards, hardware and boot times, the idea of
'flicker-free' is laughable. It's an abysmal mess. (I wouldn't be so accusatory
if it wasn't for this claim being wheeled out so often so nonchalantly).

After getting through the BIOS splash and GRUB, what generally tends to follow
is a series of screen blanks and resolution changes (even when I've explicitly
set the native screen resolution in GRUB). With nVidia proprietary graphics an
additional splash screen fights for attention just before the login screen
arrives. That itself, with Plasma and sddm on 42.2, but also on previous oS
versions, is at the wrong resolution and results in further blanks and another
resolution change before the desktop appears. Try all this with a docking
station and/or second monitor, each screen with its own independent blanking
and reappearance times, and the whole thing is an unmitigated dirge. It's about
as 'flicker-free' as a neon downtown jazz club sign in the rain in a film noir.

Results will vary according to several factors. On brand new machines with SSDs
the boot process can be so fast as to render Plymouth unnecessary anyway,
because there's nothing to see. By the time the screen shows something it's
already at the login screen. And if you have autologin you'll perhaps just
progress directly and smoothly to the desktop. But on other distributions I've
seen much better. Ubuntu, last time I tried it (12.04 I think) had a smooth
glowing animated logo a bit Windows-esque, on the same machine that looks so
ugly under openSUSE.

Frankly, I've often been tempted to just remove Plymouth and learn to love the
scrolling, informative, geeky boot text. At least if any regular person was
watching over my shoulder they'd think 'wow he's logging into the matrix'
rather than 'omg wtf lol look at his chaotic mess of an operating system'."