Comment 61 for bug 427356

usplash is currently *only* used if you have the cryptsetup package installed, which needs it for prompting for passphrases in the initramfs. If you aren't using encrypted disks, you should remove the cryptsetup package from your system. If you don't have cryptsetup installed but you are seeing usplash, make sure you upgrade to the latest versions of all packages in karmic and check whether that doesn't fix this. If it doesn't, please file a new bug report.

If you are using cryptsetup, booting will be unavoidably slower.