Comment 32 for bug 1386005

Given that you have uvesafb configured, I'm surprised to see that you don't have anything in /proc/fb. I wouldn't expect this to change as a result of booting in recovery mode, since I don't think uvesafb is a KMS driver and is therefore unaffected by the 'nomodeset' boot option. Also, it seems you're passing 'nomodeset' even in your default boot config.

If you disable the use of uvesafb in /etc/default/grub (by setting GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"), do you experience any problems? This is probably the most straightforward workaround for right now. It won't give you a graphical plymouth splash, but it also won't force you to use recovery mode to boot.