Most of my workstations & laptops require a passphrase typed in to open the encrypted root filesystem. So my steps to booting are as follows: Power on machine Wait for FDE passphrase prompt Type in FDE passphrase Wait for boot to complete and automatic XFCE session to start Since I need to know when the computer is ready to accept the passphrase, it is important the framebuffer is usable during the early part of the boot.
