Comment 36 for bug 761830

I've dug into this issue a bit. I don't think there's much use in distinguishing between the various Ubuntu flavors here; it all comes down to this bit in /etc/grub.d/10_linux:

for word in $GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT; do
  if [ "$word" = splash ]; then
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT vt.handoff=7"
  fi
done

If you remove "splash" from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub and run update-grub(8), then you get a login prompt on tty1 when you boot a command-line system. If Ubuntu Server is doing anything different, it's probably in how the defaults in this file are configured.

I don't see the purpose of switching to tty7 if "splash" is specified but X is not installed, so maybe the 10_linux file needs an additional conditional (e.g. "[ -x /etc/X11/X ]").

Colin, you've said that the purpose of all this is "to transition smoothly to Plymouth, not to transition smoothly to X11" (bug 695658, comment 6). Could you clarify what should be happening in the splash-sans-X case?