I’ve read about the addition of ‘microcode’ somewhere, so this one doesn’t come as a surprise. I’ve also noticed though that the .pacnew wants to move the ‘block’ hook after ‘consolefont’ now. It would also remove the ‘plymouth’ and ‘resume’ hooks.
I haven’t added ‘plymouth’ and ‘resume’ in the first place so I wonder why they aren’t part of the standard HOOKS line? I like the splash screen and hibernation. Is it really advised to get rid of these two hooks?
And just to be on the safe side, I remember I have to sudo mkinitcpio -P after making the changes to mkinitcpio.conf, right? Do I also have to sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg or is this only necessary when making changes to grub?
I have to admit this is a little cryptic. I’ve got no idea what you’re trying to tell me.
I’ve searched the forum prior to asking the question. I’ve read about a bunch of plymouth issues. Mainly edge cases (optimus-manager) or NVIDIA related stuff. Then there are complaints about the forced ‘kms’ hook installation to make plymouth work|avoid the black bootscreen problem. Nothing specific to the ‘plymouth’ hook other than tutorials for uninstalling plymouth altogether.
I also found the .pacnew post by @linub. That’s why I knew about the ‘microcode’ hook.
If I merge the .pacnew now, it would effectively remove the ‘plymouth’ hook and I just wonder if it is considered best practice to remove it. That’s at least what I get from the .pacnew file. Why would the Manjaro team go the extra mile of forcefully installing the ‘kms’ hook to make ‘plymouth’ work but not include the ‘plymouth’ hook in the .pacnew file?
EDIT (28.05.24)
I was really having a battle with myself on what to do and also had to pluck up some courage to tinker with mkinitcpio.conf and grub.cfg. I always expect this going horribly wrong and me ending up with an unbootable system.
Nevertheless I finally did it yesterday. I merged the .pacnew, removed the plymouth hook, rebuild the initramfs, removed “quiet” and “splash” from /etc/default/grub and rebuilt the grub.cfg. I even removed the plymouth package and theme from the system.
I come from years of using Ubuntu since 6.10 (Edgy Eft) which worked out of the box, so I never felt the need to dive deeper into Linux/the depths of the OS. Since I’ve changed to a rolling release distribution with Manjaro, I’ve read and learnt a lot out of sheer necessity. The last year has really been an adventure.
Yes, it is always considered best practice to search, then analyze what you found, and then do what you think is recommended. So you have already done what needs to be done.
It is understandable that you are unsure at the beginning. But you were exactly on the right track. Keep it up and you will enjoy Manjaro for a long time.
As long as you are unsure, the forum is always there to protect you. But the way I see you, you don’t do anything stupid on your own.
Plymouth caused a lot of problems/bugs recently, so it cannot hurt to disable it.
If you use standby/resume/suspend, you will of course need the resume hook.
This is the short/beginner version for a starter. There is actually a lot more to each topic - hooks, microcode, plymouth, resume, but that is for you to discover in time.
I recommend reading something about “Timeshift” and Snapper.
Since I’ve been using btrfs and snapper, I’m no longer afraid of changing config files. A copy of the previous state is always available in the snapshots.
Out of habit, I still make a copy of some files
before making changes. (Often with the extension .240525)
in the files, I often copy the line in question and put “#” at the beginning with an additional line “# 240525”
This makes it easy to assess changes (or undo them). Even if disadvantages only become apparent after 2 months.
You can find good Information about Btrfs in the wiki
plymouth
)
EDIT (28.05.24) 
