Ubuntu's best kept startup secret

General Image: 

Startupmanager is perhaps Ubuntu Linux's best kept startup secret. If you want a little more control over the screens that appear when your computer starts up I strongly encourage you to install startupmanager. Installation is simple:

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Startupmanager gives you control over the colour-depth, resolution, and image (Usplash) that loads as Ubuntu Linux starts to load. It also lets you set colours for the grub boot loader and change the timeout option.

While messing around with usplash I symbolically linked to a file that caused my usplash to disappear and text to appear in its place. Installing startupmanager fixed the usplash symbolic link problem.

Note: A word of caution from the startupmanager web site: it's possible that things may not go well and you render your startup so that it doesn't work. The site says, "if you're unlucky." I haven't had this experience yet, but it is possible, so be forewarned if you use startupmanager.