Many montors are a bit slow when it comes to mode switching (resolution, hz, color depth). At least that is my experience with asus rog gaming monitors.
Plymouth can look cool, but another use case is of course that you already very early (initramfs) switch to the hopefully-final graphics mode. That’s what I want to use it for. With
kernelParams = [
"video=HDMI-A-1:5120x2880-24@120"
"nvidia-drm.modeset=1"
]
it actually does go to the appropriate mode very early in the boot process. This even works without plymouth.
But once lightdm takes over it still makes a mode switch, and the monitor takes some seconds to show an image again. From what I can tell the switch is to the exact same mode. At least when judging from the monitor’s own osd menu. The flicker when switching to lightdm is really a mode switch (you can tell from the monitor’s osd menu dying), it is not lightdm being slow and just showing black background for a while.
Did anyone have success reducing mode switches, or does anyone have other pointers how to achieve it?
Similarly, switching between X and some virtual terminal makes the monitor switch modes, even thou those virtual terminals are then also in 5120x2880-24@120, same as X.
/Daniel