After #4555 landed I dug into how the new Plymouth option interacts with NVIDIA setups (a topic I find interesting), and there's a gap: we install nvidia-open but never put the kernel modules into the initramfs.
Two consequences:
- The splash starts on SimpleDRM, and when nvidia-drm finally loads from the root fs it kicks SimpleDRM out. Depending on hardware that's anywhere from a quick mode switch to a few seconds of black screen (plymouth upstream issue 264 is about exactly this).
- The nasty one: with LUKS, current plymouth (26.134.222) deliberately skips SimpleDRM and waits for a real DRM driver. There is no nvidia-drm in the initramfs, so at the password prompt stage it never shows up - the user gets a delayed/text/black prompt. And nvidia + LUKS + Plymouth is a combination archinstall happily produces now.
The good news: everything else just works in 2026. modeset=1 and fbdev=1 are driver defaults, and the kms hook is harmless next to nvidia (modconf puts the blacklists into the image). Early loading is the only missing piece.
So the suggestion: when the gfx driver is NVIDIA and Plymouth is selected, add
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
and probably ship a pacman hook to rebuild the initramfs on driver updates, otherwise the modules go stale (CachyOS early-loads unconditionally via chwd, and stale modules are their most common breakage).
This overlaps with #1239, but I'd argue that one has outlived itself: it asked to early-load for everyone back when modeset wasn't a default and basic functionality was the concern. In 2026 late loading just works for the general case - Plymouth is the only scenario left where early loading buys something the user actually sees. So it might even make sense to close #1239 in favor of this issue, with its much narrower scope (only nvidia users who explicitly turned Plymouth on).
After #4555 landed I dug into how the new Plymouth option interacts with NVIDIA setups (a topic I find interesting), and there's a gap: we install nvidia-open but never put the kernel modules into the initramfs.
Two consequences:
The good news: everything else just works in 2026. modeset=1 and fbdev=1 are driver defaults, and the kms hook is harmless next to nvidia (modconf puts the blacklists into the image). Early loading is the only missing piece.
So the suggestion: when the gfx driver is NVIDIA and Plymouth is selected, add
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)and probably ship a pacman hook to rebuild the initramfs on driver updates, otherwise the modules go stale (CachyOS early-loads unconditionally via chwd, and stale modules are their most common breakage).
This overlaps with #1239, but I'd argue that one has outlived itself: it asked to early-load for everyone back when modeset wasn't a default and basic functionality was the concern. In 2026 late loading just works for the general case - Plymouth is the only scenario left where early loading buys something the user actually sees. So it might even make sense to close #1239 in favor of this issue, with its much narrower scope (only nvidia users who explicitly turned Plymouth on).