Why is Ubuntu sticking with Plymouth despite the fact that it doesn't work with proprietary drivers?

Question

I know the background, just want to know why such decision by Canonical.

Answer 1

Plymouth does work with the proprietary drivers - or at least it should. You generally won't get the same native resolution bootsplash that you'll get with a kms driver, but the bootsplash should work. You can even get a higher-resolution bootsplash with answers from this question. We could conceivably detect that sort of thing by default, but it's fiddly and likely to break.

Regardless of the prettiness of the bootsplash, plymouth is necessary to multiplex the boot messages that happen in parallel during the event-based boot.

Answer 2

I haven't experienced any problems with it using proprietary drivers. But even if there are a few problems with very old VGAs from manufacturers who doesn't provide proper drivers for their hardware, that cannot hold everyone else back. We wouldn't accept a user interface that was designed for 320x200 just because that was once a common resolution, for instance. The show must go on. :)