Comment 7 for bug 159262

Leszek: It sounds like you are having problems with the spash screen on boot. This post is about the *shut down* splash screen. In xubuntu you don't get a graphical shutdown unless you add the usplash_down call to gdm. It works in ubuntu most of the time without the call for some reason.

As for the startup splash, you are right, that is started using initramfs (using the frame buffer I beleive (but I could be wrong)) and then the "usplash start" call in gdm actually shuts down the spash screen. I've had problems with that too, but I found that my graphics card was happier when the startup splash was a lower resolution.