It is very common problem, so strange nobody even google about: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+plymouth+grey+screen+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 It is long known that it has problems with proprietary Nvidia drivers. While on some computers it starts in low resolution mode, on others it works in text mode. It is claimed that this happens because Nvidia drivers load at a later point and are not available for GRUB and Plymouth. So people suggest to run plymouth in framebuffer mode: https://www.onetransistor.eu/2016/03/plymouth-fix-nvidia.html https://askubuntu.com/a/362998/130585 https://askubuntu.com/q/79953/130585 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Plymouth However command given for Ubuntu not available in openSUSE. What are SUSE analogues? Strange openSUSE team knows nothing about the problem as it appears since 2016. Here another instruction trying to fix the problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4br86x/setting_up_plymouth_efi_framebuffer/ Will try it now. Any other solutions?