Pixelated Plymouth after upgrade/fresh install

**lelamal** · April 25th, 2010

Hi all. Yesterday I upgraded from Karmic to Lucid via Terminal, and everything is working nicely. However, after switching the desktop on, the OS loads OK up to GRUB loading, when new Plymouth is supposed to kick in. But all I get is a pixelated image. The five dots still flash correctly signalling the OS is loading. Apart from that, I did not notice anything else wrong.

Just to check whether it was the upgrade process to have gone wrong, I did a fresh install of Kubuntu RC, this time. As soon as I inserted the live CD, however, I could tell the end result would be the same, for the same pixelation appeared while the CD was loading. And in fact, after installation, I got the same problem (see uploaded photo). So, I'm guessing, maybe it depends on my graphic card? I'm on a Matrox G450, which has always worked fine (for example, on Kubuntu it uses kwin without a hiccup). I'm currently on Kubuntu, but the issue occurs both on it and Ubuntu, where Compiz is deactivated (don't even know if that matters), and I'm only on Metacity. If Plymouth can't be correctly displayed by my card, shouldn't it have a sort of fall-back mechanism allowing users like me to have a close-to-normal experience? Or is it a temporary issue (it's still the Release Candidate) that will hopefully be addressed before the 29th?

Thanks anyone for any insight!

**howefield** · April 25th, 2010

I had the same with Ubuntu, but a recent update sorted it, maybe Kubuntu has yet to catch up ? (Can't remember if mine was sorted with the RC, or with an update before it).

If I boot from a fresh default install, I get a perfect Plymouth screen but on switching to the current nvidia drivers, it seems to drop a notch or two in resolution, not to the extent of looking bad, but otherwise boots and is fine.

Have you searched the Lucid forum for an answer ?

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=377

**lelamal** · April 27th, 2010

Originally Posted by howefield

I had the same with Ubuntu, but a recent update sorted it, maybe Kubuntu has yet to catch up ? (Can't remember if mine was sorted with the RC, or with an update before it).

Hi, thanks for replying. I saw an update, tried to read the changes but couldn't understand much. I applied it, but nothing changed. Today I see there's another one, and I'm going to apply it soon. If anything changed for the better, I'll report back soon!

Originally Posted by howefield

If I boot from a fresh default install, I get a perfect Plymouth screen but on switching to the current nvidia drivers, it seems to drop a notch or two in resolution, not to the extent of looking bad, but otherwise boots and is fine.

Have you searched the Lucid forum for an answer ?

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=377

Thanks for the hint, I've tried, but no luck yet. Maybe change is coming soon...