How to get a simpler (text only?) startup sequence?

[Tom H]

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
>
> Once upon a time when I booted my linux box I watched a load of text
> flow past, got a login, logged in, ran startx and it all worked,
> quickly!
>
> Now when I boot my linux box (well, any one of several actually) I see
> *nothing* between the BIOS screen and the pretty (?) lubuntu/xubuntu
> screen asking me to log in. Increasingly I'm seeing *long* delays on
> the way as Network Manager and Plymouth between them waste my time
> waiting for networks to configure themselves (or not). On my laptop in
> particular it's getting steadily worse as I alternate regularly between
> wired and WiFi network connections and the system really doesn't cope
> with this well.
>
> I have tried to tell grub to tell me what's happenning as it goes but it
> appears incapable of working on any of my systems, I just get a blank
> screen during boot whatever I do.
>
> Can I remove all of the plymouth junk and as a result get a text only
> login sequence or is there more to it than that? I have already removed
> Network Manager and replaced it with wicd which has made some things
> work better.

You can press "Esc" during the "pretty" phase and you'll see the usual
boot-up messages.

You need plymouth for early-boot logging. It has a text theme if you
don't want to have the gui one.