PLYMOUTH(8)

📦
version 26.134.222 · 16 versions
, in alpine 3.24

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, this page is about plymouth — the manual lives at PLYMOUTH(8), filed under System Administration, and plymouth itself is a graphical boot system and logger. that's the whole vibe. ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

ok so plymouth is a graphical boot system for Linux and it is genuinely iconic. it takes advantage of the kernel-based mode setting (KMS) that's available for modern graphic cards, which is what lets it give you a seamless, flickerfree and attractive boot screen. no cap. 🦋

the way it works is it lets you choose between various themes — static or animated, your pick — to spruce up the startup and dodge all the noise generated by the vast amount of kernel messages while the machine boots into X. it's giving main character energy for your boot process, fr fr. 🙈

and on systems where kernel-based mode setting is not available? don't panic, she's got a fallback. plymouth drops to a text mode boot screen which provides a simple progress bar to provide feedback during boot. still useful, still slaying. 💅

🎀 the whole splash situation

okay this part is important, listen up. for the configured default plymouth theme to actually be loaded during boot, the option splash (or rhgb for backward compatibility with the RHGB boot splash, iykyk) must be provided at the kernel command line.

without this command line option, plymouth will default to showing detailed boot output. that's it. that's the deal. no splash, no sparkle. 😭

⭐ switching it up mid-boot

during the boot process, the user can switch between the graphical theme and the detailed boot output using the Escape key. one little tap and you're backstage. 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

👑 AUTHORS 👑

credit where credit is due, bestie:

  • plymouth was originally prototyped and named by Kristian Høgsberg
  • originally written by Ray Strode
  • has had significant contributions from Charlie Brej
  • it has also had contributions from Peter Jones, Adam Jackson, Frederic Crozat and others 💜

and that's the page!! 🎀✨ this one's plymouth, manual entry PLYMOUTH(8), hanging out in the System Administration section — go forth and have a pretty boot, ily, bye 💖🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from