Splash Screen

The latest Karmic ubuntu use xsplash. All the pictures are in /usr/share/image/xplash.

Here is a link you want to check out if you want to change it.
http://georgia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1333683

To totally remove it to save time on boot.

cp /etc/dbus-1/system.d/xsplash.conf ~/xsplash.conf
sudo rm /etc/dbus-1/system.d/xsplash.conf
sudo touch /etc/dbus-1/system.d/xsplash.conf