This question has been answered before, but neither of the methods in the accepted answer worked for me on 11.10.
First I tried editing in /etc/default/grub, and then running sudo update-grub. But after that I still got a blank, plain, purple screen while the kernel is loading. The screen has no boot options, and it obscures those dmesg that I want to see going in the terminal.
Next I tried removing the plymouth-theme-*, but that just broke my gnome-shell theme looks, and the purple screen still remains.
I have also tried configuring it with startupmanager package, but nothing seems to get rid of that darned purple splash.
here are the contents of my /etc/default/grub file:
# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
# info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'
GRUB_DEFAULT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT="0"
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET="true"
GRUB_TIMEOUT="0"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`"
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"
# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
# GRUB_TERMINAL="console"
# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE="640x480"
# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID="true"
# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="true"
