[HN Gopher] Gorgeous-GRUB: collection of decent community-made G...
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       Gorgeous-GRUB: collection of decent community-made GRUB themes
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 406 points
       Date   : 2025-05-03 22:57 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | What I really would like: something that mimicked the old SGI
       | start up, complete with boot audio and a micro distro for OS
       | setup. These days, with snapshot filesystems, that shouldn't be
       | too hard. Also, I've had to chroot to fix my system in my life a
       | few times; I can't believe that's hard to automate.
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | On Arch, I think you could install a second "backup" copy of
         | Arch Linux on a recovery partition that your motherboard
         | firmware can boot into directly, and then use the `arch-chroot`
         | program to recover your main OS. I'm sure something similar
         | exists for other distros?
        
           | immibis wrote:
           | You can always do this on any distro, but not necessarily
           | with the install wizard.
        
         | Fnoord wrote:
         | macOS has both these features, sort of.
         | 
         | Startup chime in SGI machines depended on model. So an Indy had
         | a different one than an Onyx. My first PC (80286) also had
         | iconic sounds when it started up. Never forget.
         | 
         | Micro distro, is recovery OS. All three major desktop OSes have
         | such, or a key combination to activate such. Android has two
         | recovery partitions I believe, redundancy is key.
         | 
         | If you like the power of snapshots, yep filesystems with CoW
         | like ZFS can show a list during boot. An OS like NixOS wouldn't
         | even need such. Works perfectly fine with Ext4FS, including
         | boot menu with snapshots, rollback feature, etc.
        
           | mzi wrote:
           | > My first PC (80286) also had iconic sounds when it started
           | up.                   BEEP BOP. bidiedi-bop. bip.
        
         | mikepurvis wrote:
         | I feel like your best bet with this would be one of the kexec-
         | based bootloaders, because then it's a "real" Linux environment
         | there, with whatever tools you want in it, instead of something
         | special.
         | 
         | Eg: https://github.com/kexecboot/kexecboot
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | I do wish more effort was made to polish all the bits and
         | pieces because all of this exists in _some_ form. I suppose
         | some of it is that everyone is doing their own slightly
         | different thing; NixOS lets you boot to earlier generations,
         | but only by completely turning the filesystem inside out,
         | OpenSUSE can do snapshots, but using BTRFS which means that not
         | many other distros even _can_ use the same implementation, ZFS
         | is the bee 's knees but on Linux licensing always adds
         | friction, Ubuntu made boot super smooth via Plymouth but it's
         | very... Ubuntu.
         | 
         | Anyways. If you're in a position to run Linux on ZFS, may I
         | suggest zfsbootmenu?
         | 
         | > ZFSBootMenu leverages the features of modern OpenZFS to allow
         | users to choose among multiple "boot environments" (which may
         | represent different versions of a Linux distribution, earlier
         | snapshots of a common root, or entirely different
         | distributions), manipulate snapshots in a pre-boot environment
         | and, for the adventurous user, even bootstrap a system
         | installation via zfs recv.
         | 
         | - https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/v3.0.x/index.html
        
           | Hasnep wrote:
           | What's wrong with Plymouth? I use it on NixOS and it seems to
           | just work and show a Nix logo on boot
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | Interesting, either it got a lot better or I misremembered.
             | Last time I looked, using Plymouth on anything but Ubuntu
             | was a lot of rough edges and manual setup. By skimming wiki
             | pages it does indeed look like that's not true anymore (if
             | indeed it ever was; I _could_ have been wrong before).
        
           | mrbluecoat wrote:
           | I just found ZFSBootMenu and am really enjoying it so far.
           | Cracks me up that all the zfs tutorials online are from circa
           | 2010. I guess I missed the memo back then. For those wanting
           | to try it, it took me a while to find the actual installation
           | instructions:
           | https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/latest/guides/void-
           | linux/uef...
        
         | ibizaman wrote:
         | On NixOS we get one new grub menu entry per "deployment", be it
         | when you deploy to another host or the local one. They both
         | then get a new grub entry. Of course you can still shoot
         | yourself in the foot by making your system inaccessible
         | remotely, by screwing up ssh config for example. There's also a
         | solution for that called deploy-rs which has a magic rollback
         | feature which rolls back the system if it can't connect back to
         | the computer initiating the deployment
         | https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs?tab=readme-ov-file#mag...
         | 
         | I'm using these features since multiple years now and can vouch
         | for them.
         | 
         | Not exactly related to your initial question but I also have my
         | system build in CI and do some playwright tests which become
         | more and more comprehensive as time passes. This all gives me
         | quite a lot of confidence I'll find an issue early or be able
         | to revert back.
        
           | oarmstrong wrote:
           | Could you tell me more about the playwright tests? From what
           | I can see it's a web testing framework, I don't see how that
           | fits in here.
        
             | ibizaman wrote:
             | Ah you're right. I should've been more clear.
             | 
             | I'm deploying on my server and it self hosts 10 or so
             | services. Like Nextcloud and Vaultwarden. The playwright
             | tests are to test those. It's pretty basic like just
             | checking I can create a user and still login. But it still
             | caught a few regressions. And they're still WIP. I'm
             | getting close to being able to validate the LLDAP +
             | Authelia config works too. It's particularly useful in
             | conjunction with automatically running flake update in CI.
             | So all inputs get updated on a schedule and the tests give
             | some level of guarantee that my server won't break. It's
             | essentially QA tests automated.
             | 
             | This link shows what the playwright tests look like. They
             | are parametrized on the service to test so I'm sure I'm
             | testing the same functionality every time. https://github.c
             | om/ibizaman/selfhostblocks/blob/c2148eda7704...
        
               | oarmstrong wrote:
               | Ah got it, thanks. I thought you were testing the image
               | somehow, a bit like inspec.
               | 
               | Still cool though, nice.
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | I'm a huge proponent of customisation, but for me, the less I
       | have to see or even think about GRUB, the better.
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | Yeah, I usually see it for seconds a _year_. If I saw it often
         | enough to worry about theming it, I 'd rather spend my time on
         | fixing whatever caused me to have to see it so ofen.
        
           | vasco wrote:
           | You'd spend more quality time with it if it looked beautiful.
           | Think about it going up and down those menus for hours on
           | end. Quality grub.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | Meanwhile, with kexec on a good day you can spend _zero_
             | time in the bootloader for as long as the system doesn 't
             | need a full hard-off power down:)
        
           | esseph wrote:
           | Ah. You don't ever patch, I guess.
        
             | bigstrat2003 wrote:
             | Or he is managing headless systems where you don't see the
             | boot process unless something has gone wrong.
        
             | exe34 wrote:
             | I never wait for a computer to boot by staring at it unless
             | I'm fixing a problem with the boot process. I wander off
             | and come back later.
        
               | fuzzfactor wrote:
               | When I'm on the move I'll power up a PC without sitting
               | down and come back to it later, but never "wander off" if
               | I'm already sitting there since it only takes about 20
               | seconds to cold boot, 5 seconds of which is intentional
               | delay in case I want to choose something other than my
               | default OS from the bootmenu.
               | 
               | I say it is really nice not to have any problems with the
               | boot process myself.
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | That's where those few seconds a year comes from. My boot
             | screen is visible for a second or two when I reboot - this
             | isn't the 90s.
        
           | guax wrote:
           | I think this is the kind of thing I would do If I had to
           | choose between OSs with frequency, either home
           | lab/experimentation or linux for stuffs and windows for games
           | kind of scenario.
           | 
           | So there is nothing to fix, the nice choice screen is a
           | feature.
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | Look at the screenshots. They are all about booting multiple
           | OSes or distros, and should make sense for those who switch
           | between them often. ("Why" is another question.)
        
             | hnbad wrote:
             | I used to dual boot with Windows before WSL was a thing and
             | I agree that back then I'd see GRUB on a daily basis.
        
               | nine_k wrote:
               | BTW, before that, coLinux existed!
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Linux
        
       | PebblesHD wrote:
       | While these are cool, I honestly wish GRUB was silent unless
       | you're holding a key during boot. The 5 seconds it takes to go
       | away and just boot the OS by default is really unnecessary.
        
         | treyd wrote:
         | I'm pretty sure there is an option for this, holding shift
         | makes it show the menu.
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | What if you don't remember the key you need to press?
        
           | necovek wrote:
           | You RTFM (which can be a quick search or LLM chat away on
           | another device like your phone).
        
         | kej wrote:
         | I think you can get that by setting `GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden`
         | and `GRUB_TIMEOUT=0`. Then you can hold `Shift` to see the GRUB
         | menu, otherwise it will boot the default option immediately.
        
           | dustbunny wrote:
           | Good tip. I've always felt like I'd like to be able to boot
           | directly into the Second Option via a key, etc. like Shift +
           | 2 etc
        
           | homebrewer wrote:
           | Make sure this works on your system _before_ you really need
           | it, as some keyboard /USB-controller combinations take a few
           | seconds to wake up from whatever slumber they're in and start
           | working. I ran into this several times.
        
             | NikkiA wrote:
             | That's likely something related to USB legacy support being
             | on or off.
             | 
             | A lot of modern BIOS/EFI also allow a hybrid setting that
             | enables legacy support until the OS takes over, which can
             | sometimes be better too.
        
         | voidfunc wrote:
         | Why would you actually want this? Such a weird desire to hide
         | this kind of stuff because it's so inconsequential in my mind.
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | Because sane OSes have sane defaults, and this is one of
           | them. Hide information by default, unless called for. Want
           | verbose boot log? Ask for it. Want boot menu? Ask for it.
           | Need Bluetooth enabled at boot? Aak for it. Don't overburden
           | the user with irrelevant info. When my 7 y.o. daughter fires
           | up the Steam Decj, she doesn't need to see the boot menu.
        
             | panny wrote:
             | >she doesn't need to see
             | 
             | My parents let me decide what I needed to see and learn how
             | to customize things for myself. That seems like a sane
             | default to me.
        
               | Fnoord wrote:
               | No, they don't; they let you decide _some_ things which
               | are relevant. People in the know decide defaults. This is
               | how it works everywhere. Else you 'd learn to bicycle
               | with your own traffic rules. You'd end under a bus.
               | 
               | Addendum: You could say you want a sandbox, and that such
               | is part of the sandbox to play with. Then you need some
               | kind of way to clean up, like you can clean up the toys
               | your kids play with (or ensure _they_ clean up their own
               | mess), or ensure their sandbox environment is safe (such
               | as no fire hazards in your house). Then I would argue a
               | VM is such. OS with rollbacks or a user account on an OS
               | or locked down iOS /Android could suffice, too.
        
               | panny wrote:
               | >you'd learn to bicycle
               | 
               | My parents gave me the bicycle in a box. I had to put it
               | together if I wanted to ride it. They owned the bicycle
               | shop too. They could have put it together for me, but
               | they let me do it.
        
           | JoshTriplett wrote:
           | On a modern laptop running Linux, the three slowest things in
           | the boot are:
           | 
           | - The firmware
           | 
           | - The bootloader timeout
           | 
           | - Waiting for the user to type the encryption passphrase
           | 
           | Everything else takes almost no time at all. So, if you can
           | eliminate 5 seconds from the boot process in the normal case,
           | without eliminating your ability to debug the system in the
           | unusual case, that's a win.
        
             | pm215 wrote:
             | But how often do you boot a modern laptop in the first
             | place? I feel lke the time I save in not waiting those 5
             | seconds occasionally is all going to be spent again in the
             | minutes wasted having to look up how I stop the instant
             | autoboot (or failing to stop the autoboot and having to
             | reset and try again) the first time I need to actually
             | interact with grub...
        
               | JoshTriplett wrote:
               | Every time you update the Linux kernel, among other
               | things.
               | 
               | Or, if you're working on speeding up virtual machine
               | boots, in which case you skip the bootloader entirely and
               | use the kernel's EFI stub.
        
             | Zardoz84 wrote:
             | if you use the TPM storage, you can avoid typing the
             | encryption passphrase
        
               | JoshTriplett wrote:
               | That doesn't provide the desired security, unless you
               | also then carefully lock down the system so that the TPM
               | doesn't provide the key if the software has changed.
               | That's theoretically doable but challenging, with many
               | failure modes in both directions: not being able to get
               | into the system, or someone being able to get into the
               | system when they shouldn't.
        
             | lofaszvanitt wrote:
             | .
        
       | arp242 wrote:
       | "Grand Theft Gentoo":
       | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB/ref...
        
         | 9dev wrote:
         | Oh my gosh, that one's a gem! Rage Linus on the top right, smug
         | confused Balmer on the bottom... the Gates mugshot is icing on
         | the cake. awesome!
        
       | WD-42 wrote:
       | Stuff like this is why I fell in love with Linux. Some amazing
       | creativity in here. Almost makes me wish I dual booted with
       | something so I'd have an excuse to see grub!
        
         | lopis wrote:
         | This, wobbly windows and rain effects. I wouldn't use any of
         | that today, but it captivated me, at a time when customizing
         | windows was becoming more cumbersome with each release.
        
       | Grosvenor wrote:
       | I can finally make my computer look like the ones from hackers!
       | Awesome.
        
         | nico wrote:
         | Haha, my first thought when I saw the themes was, wow this is
         | exactly like the movie!
         | 
         | Might rewatch it soon, been listening to the soundtrack while
         | working lately :)
        
           | spitfire wrote:
           | A soundtrack so good they made three separate soundtracks.
           | The last one was entirely music that wasn't in the movie.
           | 
           | Fantastic.
        
       | jwitthuhn wrote:
       | Love the concept of BSOL, might give that a try.
        
       | imcritic wrote:
       | How do those background images scale on different
       | monitors/resolutions?
       | 
       | Btw, how does grub figure out in what resolution to draw the
       | interface?
        
         | mshockwave wrote:
         | judging from some of these repos, I think the answer is: they
         | don't. It seems like you have to manually pick images with the
         | correct resolution
        
         | shmerl wrote:
         | You can set the resolution explicitly, otherwise it will render
         | at resolution UEFI started the boot with.
        
           | cosmic_cheese wrote:
           | This is a significant peeve of mine. The need to explicitly
           | specify resolution in boot managers is annoying for both
           | laptops and machines that aren't always used with the same
           | monitor, because no matter what it's going to end up in
           | fallback with an ugly stretched resolution some portion of
           | the time, rendering beautification with themes somewhat moot.
           | 
           | This limit made sense 20+ years ago but today it feels highly
           | anachronistic, kind of like finding a corded rotary phone
           | mounted on a wall in the kitchen of an otherwise cutting edge
           | home. Surely it's something that could be fixed?
        
             | shmerl wrote:
             | May be, but this is so minor in general, that I barely care
             | as long as it boots properly.
             | 
             | Way bigger annoyance is that grub still doesn't support
             | luks2 and uses some gimped variant of libcrypto without
             | proper hardware acceleration that decrypts boot volumes for
             | almost a minute. That is way more serious than boot
             | resolution annoyances.
        
               | nextaccountic wrote:
               | That's also a peeve of mine. Is there a way at all for
               | grub to use hardware acceleration there? Or maybe the
               | bootloader isn't allowed to do such things
        
               | shmerl wrote:
               | Yes - use newer libcrypto. They are in the process of
               | switching, but it just takes very long. I don't see why
               | bootloader won't be allowed to use the CPU features that
               | accelerate decryption.
        
               | bobmcnamara wrote:
               | What can I say? Feels weird to include a JSON library in
               | a bootloader.
        
               | sneak wrote:
               | Maybe a stage 0 bootloader, definitely not a stage 3 one.
        
               | josteink wrote:
               | We are talking about a stage 3 bootloader which supports
               | booting from encrypted volumes and ZFS snapshots.
               | 
               | JSON-support would be adding 0.001% extra to the overall
               | package.
        
               | cosmic_cheese wrote:
               | In terms of material impact, it is minor but as far as
               | impression shaping papercuts go, bootloader jank is
               | pretty high up on the list.
        
             | rsaxvc wrote:
             | My pet peeve is that grub repartitions windows disks on
             | chain load, so if it ever boots with the disks remapped,
             | there's a chance it'll plow apart the partition table of
             | whatever poor disk got mapped to that hd#.
        
       | noisy_boy wrote:
       | I'm still waiting for a bootloader that will show up right from
       | the beginning on my external monitor like my desktop + CRT
       | monitor could do 20 years ago. systemd-boot (included with
       | Pop!_OS) doesn't do that - so I have to actually take out my
       | (Thinkpad X1 extreme) laptop from its stand and open it up to be
       | able to switch between boot options; would be good to know
       | people's experience with Grub on this front.
        
         | xnickb wrote:
         | It's definitely a "you" problem. It works for me over a monitor
         | connected via a docking station. I have tries pop os a while
         | ago but it definitely worked.
        
           | noisy_boy wrote:
           | My setup is as Linux friendly/vanilla as it comes; my laptop
           | and dock are both Thinkpad and the monitor is Dell. Nothing
           | exotic. It didn't even work when my monitor was directly
           | connected via USB-C or HDMI so I guess I'm out of ideas about
           | how it is a "me" problem.
        
             | boomboomsubban wrote:
             | If you go into your UEFI, does your external monitor work?
             | As Linux drivers wouldn't be in play when GRUB is running.
        
         | PhilipRoman wrote:
         | I suspect it may depend on the monitor, not the bootloader.
         | Some of them have a longer delay when turning on than others.
         | My 4k connected over displayport has no problem, but my old
         | VGA/DVI monitor that I use for homelab recovery cannot turn on
         | fast enough.
        
         | micw wrote:
         | Check your bios for primary display. If you manage to have the
         | bios screen on the external display, it's very likely that the
         | following bootloader will also use it. Works well on my
         | ThinkPad+Dock.
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | Check the Thinkpad firmware settings to make sure the external
         | monitor and/or dock GPU is the primary display which is
         | effective during boot. On some PC's though you will then see
         | nothing during boot on the laptop's own screen, sometimes even
         | when the laptop is standalone. If Initial Graphics Device is
         | set for "Auto" instead of a specific device, that may be OK but
         | also may not be any different than you have now.
         | 
         | The external monitor may also have multiple inputs to choose
         | from, like VGA, DVI, HDMI, which also might be set to "Auto"
         | scan for which one is active, and that can sometimes take more
         | time to succeed than it takes to boot. If so, using the Input
         | Option settings on the external monitor you may be able to
         | specify your preferred input connection exclusively, or as
         | default, and then be able to see something during the time that
         | it's blank now.
        
       | pndy wrote:
       | I had one from Distro Themes once in Manjaro up until one of
       | heavy updates overwritten it with default theme.
       | 
       | Also, github gives me "You have exceeded a secondary rate limit"
       | message while it's the first time I'm visiting it today. Yey.
        
       | ykonstant wrote:
       | I am weary of GRUB and try to avoid it. The codebase is legendary
       | for its inscrutability, bugs and performance issues abound and
       | its configuration ritual is ridiculous.
       | 
       | And yet, it is king of bootloaders for a reason. It can frigging
       | boot HannaMontanaBSD on an ENIAC. It can boot in UEFI mode, in
       | BIOS mode, it is a chameleon that fits the hardware it is
       | situated in. The devs have made a heroic piece of software.
       | 
       | Perhaps the inscrutability of the code and its issues are
       | inevitable given the scope of the project. I don't know, I just
       | wish we had a more sane codebase with GRUB's capabilities.
        
       | buserror wrote:
       | Grub is like a turd that won't flush. It's been completely
       | unnecessary for years, is massively overcomplicated, pretty much
       | unusable as a shell with it's 1995 idioms, and there are much,
       | MUCH lighter (and as useful) replacements (extlinux etc) -- and
       | you can even just remove it completely and boot the kernel
       | _directly_ these days with the EFI stub...
       | 
       | But still, it gets installed, trying to justify its existence.
        
         | onli wrote:
         | Okay. I have a laptop here with windows, haiku and Linux. And
         | actually the grub (2) configuration to get haiku to start was
         | strange. What exactly do I install best to replace grub?
         | 
         | Or alternatively, I have a PC with only Void Linux.
         | Compatibility mode for booting, since uefi mode did not work (I
         | dont know why - some secure boot shenanigans? MBR vs GPT mode?
         | There is no EFI partition as well). What could replace grub
         | there?
        
           | johnisgood wrote:
           | I am on Void Linux too, and grub works fine. _sighs_. Why
           | would I replace what has worked for decades?
        
             | onli wrote:
             | I personally would like to be able to enable the UEFI boot
             | mode of the board, so that I can enable Resizeable bar -
             | for the performance benefit and to have the option to add
             | an Intel GPU later. So cleaning up the GRUB situation could
             | help me there - that's why my comment above was completely
             | serious, I'd really look at suggestion.
             | 
             | Because otherwise I see it like you, why change what works.
             | Even the move to Grub 2 with the more complicated config
             | options wasn't all that bad, since it really needed less
             | often to be configured manually. So after a bit I was fine
             | with that.
        
           | the_gipsy wrote:
           | In same boat here. I just do not understand the *EFI stuff
           | anymore, and I've tried.
           | 
           | I somehow got refind to work, after disabling some vaguely
           | named "secure boot" option in the BIOS. It shows my several
           | linux options, and the only one that works is "rescue", that
           | boots what is apparently a systemd bootloader with Nix
           | generations. When I select Windows, I get some windows boot
           | menu/loader instead of directly booting Windows.
           | 
           | I have no clue how it all works - there is some partition
           | with some files, but I also must run some command to "apply"
           | changes - I think. It's horrible.
        
           | jimbosis wrote:
           | I don't know if it will work for booting Windows, but have
           | you tried installing Haiku's BootManager to the MBR?
           | 
           | https://www.haiku-
           | os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/boot...
           | 
           | On the booting Windows front, this thread has a few people
           | describing how they successfully used BootManager to dual and
           | triple boot Haiku, Windows 7, and/or Linux:
           | 
           | https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/dual-booting-haiku-and-
           | window...
           | 
           | I have a laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad T410s) with Haiku, Linux
           | Mint, and Devuan GNU/Linux. I use BootManager in the MBR, and
           | it gives me a menu of all three to choose from. For the two
           | Linux options, I have GRUB installed on each of their own
           | partitions, so BootManager just sends me to the GRUB
           | installed on whichever Linux partition. (Of course, this
           | isn't exactly "replacing" GRUB altogether.)
           | 
           | I do it this way because I find dealing with BootManager to
           | send me to individual GRUBs to boot a particular Linux
           | partition much, much easier than fiddling with GRUB to boot
           | Haiku.
           | 
           | (One last thought, parenthetical as I'm not sure it can even
           | work from a USB drive: Worst case, you might make a USB "boot
           | stick" that uses BootManager to choose between Haiku and
           | Linux and let Windows do its jolly thing on the MBR?)
        
             | onli wrote:
             | I tried to install the BootManager, but the limitations
             | mentioned in the docs blocked the install. I think this
             | part:
             | 
             | > _BootManager isn 't yet tested very well and still has a
             | few restrictions that it will complain about if they aren't
             | met: the menu can only be installed on your first harddisk
             | and there has to be a 2KiB space after the Master Boot
             | Record (MBR)._
             | 
             | No idea how to create those conditions, the 2KiB space, and
             | since I would have to do it with gparted in Linux anyway
             | this made me install Linux instead first (with grub).
             | 
             | BootManager actually sounded nice - like you describe, I
             | expected it to simply offer me the other OS(s) option(s),
             | and I wasn't even set on installing Linux in the first
             | place on that machine.
             | 
             | To your parenthesis: Yeah, I even had a boot manager on USB
             | once for my PC, so it crossed my mind here, but for a
             | travel laptop this would be a bit uncomfortable.
        
         | wrasee wrote:
         | I thought the advent of UFEI would finally put GRUB to rest.
         | 
         | Worse, if you dual boot and each OS installs its own GRUB you
         | can get all kinds of silly situations where one GRUB will chain
         | load to another GRUB and then boot the OS.
         | 
         | Why not just hit F12 (or whatever) and UEFI gives you this nice
         | little menu of all your boot options right there, before
         | installers can come in and ruin it. (Like Windows that always
         | seems to barge in and put itself on top trashing whatever you
         | had before.)
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | Setting GRUB up with full-disk encryption and BTRFS snapshots
         | is braindead easy. Maybe it'd be just as easy with Gummiboot or
         | rEFInd, but you know what they say about fixing things that
         | aren't broken.
        
           | 63stack wrote:
           | What's the current state of the art on this? Last time I
           | looked it was really not trivial, because of two things:
           | 
           | 1) there is only one bootloader (grub2) that can load kernels
           | from encrypted /boot partitions, but the support for that is
           | limited, you have to use a weaker encryption if I remember
           | correctly, AND decryption speed (after entering the luks
           | password) is super slow, because the CPU extensions that
           | speed that up (AES) are not yet online that early in the boot
           | process
           | 
           | 2) you can choose to not encrypt /boot, and have it as a
           | separate partition, but now your btrfs snapshots will not
           | include the kernel, so restoring after kernel upgrades is
           | going to break your system
        
             | tmtvl wrote:
             | I am only really familiar with Arch and OpenSUSE, so I
             | don't know how other distros do it, but OpenSUSE keeps the
             | (I believe) latest 5 kernels, so I just have to delete
             | snapshots older than the oldest kernel in my /boot. I like
             | that system so I do the same thing on Arch (but don't tell
             | anyone, otherwise I'm gonna get yelled at).
        
               | 63stack wrote:
               | Doesn't deleting old kernels defeat snapshots? You do a
               | system update, you get a new kernel, you delete the old
               | ones, now all snapshots that depend on that older kernel
               | are busted, what am I missing?
        
               | tmtvl wrote:
               | You may have misread, what I do is I keep the 5 latest
               | versions of the kernel the distro ships and I delete
               | snapshots which depend on kernels older than those 5. I
               | could keep all the kernels and snapshots, but I don't
               | have that much storage dedicated to / and /boot.
        
             | johnisgood wrote:
             | Check out Arch's wikipedia for plain dm-crypt.
        
           | johnisgood wrote:
           | It really is easy, it is just mostly a matter of proper
           | initramfs, and a "linux" line in the GRUB configuration file.
           | Arch wiki gets into it in detail.
        
         | johnisgood wrote:
         | I am perfectly fine with grub and os-prober.
        
         | im3w1l wrote:
         | Grub can't even boot my windows install. Maybe it's possible
         | but after spending 4 hours on it I didn't feel like trying
         | anymore.
        
           | DaSHacka wrote:
           | `GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false` ?
        
             | im3w1l wrote:
             | Doesn't work, no windows entry (I also ran sudo os-prober
             | && sudo update-grub)
        
         | spookie wrote:
         | I don't get the hate. It just works for me, always has. And I
         | have dual boot with encryption. It is such a small thing in the
         | grand scheme of things.
         | 
         | Now compare that with booting on arm...
        
           | i80and wrote:
           | Not the parent, but I've spent enough time in the GRUB
           | recovery shell trying to recover inexplicably corrupted GRUB
           | installs even as recently as last year.
           | 
           | GRUB is shockingly fragile and painful to debug, though the
           | recent movement on BLS hopefully will help with this.
        
         | FitCodIa wrote:
         | > Grub is like a turd that won't flush. It's been completely
         | unnecessary for years, is massively overcomplicated
         | 
         | shim + grub suck, but bare bones EFI sucks way more, generally
         | speaking. Vendors of consumer-oriented EFI platforms ("client
         | platforms") are batshit insane; they don't offer UEFI console
         | redirection to/from the serial port even if the motherboard has
         | one; they expose neither secure boot configuration nor boot
         | options management to the user, and so on. A purely EFI-based
         | boot loader such as systemd-boot or rEFInd remains the least
         | annoying choice, IMO.
        
         | shmerl wrote:
         | > completely unnecessary
         | 
         | Is it? How can you boot from encrypted volumes without it? I
         | looked into systemd-boot, but I don't think it's capable.
        
       | coolgoose wrote:
       | Everybody complaining about grub forgot about lilo
        
         | whalesalad wrote:
         | RIP. Pouring one out for Linux loader.
        
           | dig1 wrote:
           | Lilo is still alive and kicking on Slackware ;)
        
             | Tsiklon wrote:
             | Does LILO work on EFI systems or is GRUB preferred in that
             | case? I've not built a Slackware box in a long time...
             | maybe this evening I'll see about putting a VM together
        
               | dig1 wrote:
               | Slack ships elilo package for EFI systems. AFAIK config
               | (elilo.conf) should be pretty much the same as standard
               | lilo.conf
        
             | fuzzfactor wrote:
             | I still prefer Syslinux but it's still not officially
             | supporting UEFI yet :(
             | 
             | The only time I would want Grub is for that reason
             | primarily. But it makes sense to be very familiar with Grub
             | so you can not be screwed up by systems you encounter which
             | may have been set up, "grub-reinstalled", or configured by
             | those who are not as familiar as they should have been.
             | 
             | Once you do have a regular ordinary multiboot system or SSD
             | that includes one or more Linux installs, with Grub working
             | well, then adding the themes like this is only the icing on
             | the cake.
        
         | teekert wrote:
         | Hehe I was like: What?! Grub was LiLo's successor and much
         | better! What happened to the time?!
         | 
         | Back in the day I had a cool self made theme from Ghost in the
         | Shell, I remember making some very obscure image format from
         | some jpeg I found online. Man what time I have put into
         | customizing my Linux experiences. The computer was truly a
         | (well trimmed) pet. With desktops on kubes with fish inside and
         | reflections etc.
        
         | FlyingSnake wrote:
         | Oh dear, you transported me back to 2003
        
         | NikkiA wrote:
         | ITYM Lilililililililililili....
        
       | typh00n wrote:
       | I use and like rEFInd as my primary bootloader to dualboot
       | Windows and Fedora.
       | 
       | Hackernews is obviously full of technical volks with need for
       | encryption and what not, but I just like the macOS bootloader
       | inspired looks that i could not replicate with grub.
        
       | christina97 wrote:
       | Very timely. I'm currently in the middle of upgrading Ubuntu
       | inside chroot to get a new version of grub that doesn't have a
       | bug with encrypted ZFS hoping it'll fix my boot... Note to the
       | universe: don't touch ZFS with a 10 foot pole unless it's your
       | full time job to maintain storage clusters.
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | https://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2015-8370-Grub2-authentication-b...
        
       | tmountain wrote:
       | Personally... love it. Great for the people that want to flex
       | this kind of aesthetic.
        
       | lofaszvanitt wrote:
       | Just like good ol installers, like the one made for C&C. When
       | things had some soul.
        
       | causality0 wrote:
       | Very pretty. Is it still impossible to change the order of the
       | boot list from inside grub?
        
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