Boot Debian Desktop Themelessly

Debian Linux as a desktop OS is amazing, considering how rock-solid it is compared to Ubuntu.

Perfect as Debian should be, the developers don’t make the boot process nice enough. You should be able to remove most of the console texts following the ArchWiki. For grub to boot completely silently and themelessly, there are two more files you need to edit.

These two files are /etc/grub.d/10_linux and /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme. In 10_linux, set quiet_boot and vt_handoff to "1":

1quiet_boot="1"
2vt_handoff="1"

This removes all the texts that grub would print to the console.

And disable 05_debian_theme by adding exit 0 directly after the shebang line(#!/bin/sh):

1#!/bin/sh
2exit 0

This removes all debian theming for grub.

Apply the changes by running this command:

1sudo update-grub

If you’d like a splash screen during boot as well, you need to install plymouth following the Debian Wiki.

Now with everything configured, you should have a good boot experience that’s comparable to Ubuntu.