I absolutely agree with eadz. Linux is about freedom, and you always can add vga=0 to your boot line or press F2 at any time to get pure text.

I am giving KnoppixKDE to all my friends (Windows users) and they mostly like KDE a great deal but are confused by all the text at the boot time. IMHO, bootsplash is no bloat but really a great step towards Linux n every desktop