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"