Comment 4 for bug 569716

The plymouth-theme-ubuntu-text package is installed by default (recommended by the ubuntu-standard package). The Ubuntu desktop installs plymouth-theme-ubuntu-logo by default, the different per-flavor desktop packages also each have their own recommended theme that's installed by default, and plymouth itself expects a theme to be installed by default. If you don't have the alternatives, that means you have no plymouth themes installed. Why not? Do you have automatic installation of recommends disabled on your system?