Ubuntu – Xubuntu start up screen…but I’m running normal Ubuntu

plymouthsystem-trayxubuntu

I was interested in playing around with XFCE. I made a liveCD and played around with it a bit and really liked it. I thought that instead of installing Xubuntu itself I would just install the metapackages on my already existing Ubuntu.

So, I tried it out by installing XFCE4 and then later xubuntu-desktop on my Ubuntu 12.04. Neither had the exact same style as the liveCD which I preferred, so I decided to delete XFCE from my computer and install a partition instead.

Through Synaptic I removed XFCE4 (and completely removed xfce-notifyd so that my notifications would work with the Unity style again). I later went on to remove most of the packages and their dependencies that came with xubuntu-desktop, and I think that removed a lot of it.

While my desktop now works perfectly, it has changed two things. For one, the Xubuntu welcome screen comes out instead of the Ubuntu one (though I have to say the Xubuntu screen looks a LOT nicer). I'd still rather it say Ubuntu. Secondly, I had tweaked Grub with grub-customizer to have an image I found of Ubuntu that was really cool. Now when Grub starts up, it has a picture of Debian (I think that's random but maybe it comes with Xubuntu?). I can probably just change the second one but still I'm just curious.

Can anyone help me get the old Ubuntu screen back?

Best Answer

I did the same XFCE experiment and was also annoyed that the Xubuntu startup logo showed up even after I (supposedly) completely uninstalled XFCE.

Pavan's answer hints at the solution that I eventually discovered. Note that my solution was done in Ubuntu 12.04 (probably works for other versions, but YMMV):

These files control are where Ubuntu gets it's start up sequence resources:

/lib/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth
/lib/plymouth/themes/text.plymouth

However, they are actually symlinks to two more symlinks which point to the actual source files:

/etc/alternatives/default.plymouth
/etc/alternatives/text.plymouth

So the solution is to delete the /etc/alternatives/ links and point them at the original ubuntu resources. Open a terminal and execute these commands:

> cd /etc/alternatives
Check out where these alternatives links are pointing to:
> ls -la *.plymouth

Remove these intermediate links (in /etc/alternatives):
> sudo rm default.plymouth
> sudo rm text.plymouth

Create new links to the original Ubuntu resources:
> sudo ln -s /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.plymouth default.plymouth
> sudo ln -s /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth text.plymouth

You should also remove the Xubuntu resources for good housekeeping:

> sudo rm -rf /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-logo
> sudo rm -rf /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-text

After doing all that, try rebooting and you should see your familiar old Ubuntu start up logo.

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