I found a version of Plymouth 0.9.2x in a user repository that displays Plymouth while using the Nvidia drivers. It really works!! Test it by adding this repository to Yast2. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/mrbadguy/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/ Can you bisect it with the Plymouth that comes with Tumbleweed? It also works with Leap 15.0.