Graphical GRUB Menu

Question

As you know, when dual booting on OSX you get a nice looking boot menu, something like:

_{(source: askdavetaylor.com)}

I was curious as to whether there is a way to replace the textual interface of GRUB with something a little more, "GUI"-ey. To an extent, to emulate the nice-looking OSX boot menu.

To change this:

to something nicer.

If it is not possible with GRUB, is it possible with another bootloader?

I have already tried using grub-customizer, but it only allows you to change the color of the text.

Does anything like this exist in the Linux world? Or is this Mac-only eye candy?

Solution 1

Try BURG. I'm sure this is exactly the ticket. It is a themeble GUI overlay for GRUB & Grub Customizer can still administrate.

Brand-new Universal loadeR from Grub;

burg is a brand-new boot loader based on GRUB. It uses a new object format which allows it to be built in a wider range of OS, including Linux/Windows/OSX/FreeBSD, etc. It also has a highly configurable menu system which works in both text and graphic mode. Additional features like stream support and multiple input/output device are also planned.

But, yes, as of comment, not actively maintained. Still I am not aware of an alternative, lets hope a developer picks up the slack...

Solution 2

Download a nice GRUB Theme

sudo tar -zxvf ~/Downloads/GRUB2-DarkSquares.tar.gz -C /boot/grub2/themes
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
#GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub2/themes/dark_squares/theme.txt"
GRUB_GFXMODE="1024x768"
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg  # Or just /boot/grub2/grub.cfg with one distro.

Works on my Fedora 32 next to Ubuntu 20.04 where update-grub is a stub for running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to generate a grub2 config file.

Comments

[Dmitry]

It's a shame for Ubuntu not to have graphical grub!

[oldfred]

Just for those still seeing this. There is rEFInd for UEFI systems. And since all new hardware since 2012 is UEFI and most installs now are UEFI (or should be). Also good to have as an emergency boot flash drive. rodsbooks.com/refind

[Aristides]

It looks beautiful. Thank you; I'll look into it. The default text menu is so drab.

[Aristides]

The wiki page does say the following though: Warning: BURG seems to be no longer actively maintained as the upstream bzr repo at https://code.launchpad.net/~bean123ch/burg/trunk does not seem to be updated after October 2010. Users are recommended to switch to GRUB(2) or Syslinux instead.

[terdon]

Please flesh this out a little. Perhaps explain how to install it or include a screenshot or an explanation of what burg can do?

[bleeves]

Might be worth mentioning that you can set also the colours and background image of grub without installing burg.