In the year 2024 many Manjaro ISOs provide and enable plymouth by default.
Which is to say it is not a system-critical component.
It also has a nasty habit of breaking boot under various circumstances.
In those cases, or simply to avoid the bloat, you can temporarily disable plymouth, permanently disable it, or remove it entirely.
First an introduction to boot options for Grub
You can tempoarily edit (add, remove, or change) boot options during boot from grub if you hit ‘e’ at selection.
Boot parameters will likely be one of or the final line, and probably include quiet and/or splash.
You can also apply them persistently by editing /etc/default/grub and editing the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line. ex:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="plymouth.enable=0 disablehooks=plymouth"
Then apply changes by running:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Boot options to temporarily disable plymouth (without further config)
The following boot parameters will disable plymouth:
plymouth.enable=0 disablehooks=plymouth
Plymouth boot option (to remove)
The splash boot option is required for plymouth. Removing it should disable plymouth.
To remove plymouth completely
- To remove the packages:
sudo pacman -Rns plymouth plymouth-theme-manjaro plymouth-kcm
(The above is the common minimum, but you may have extra packages such as for themes)
- To remove from initram edit
/etc/mkinitcpio.confand removeplymouthfrom HOOKS.
Afterwards to rebuild initram run:
sudo mkinitcpio -P
(after rebuilding initram update grub, as in the following section, even if grub remains unchanged)
- To remove from grub edit
/etc/default/gruband remove thesplashoption.
Afterwards to update grub:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
And reboot of course.