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.
mikepurvis · 1h ago
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.
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?
Fnoord · 2h ago
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.
imcritic · 2h ago
How do those background images scale on different monitors/resolutions?
Btw, how does grub figure out in what resolution to draw the interface?
mshockwave · 2h ago
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 · 1h ago
You can set the resolution explicitly, otherwise it will render at resolution UEFI started the boot with.
cosmic_cheese · 52m ago
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?
rsaxvc · 20m ago
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#.
shmerl · 37m ago
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.
bobmcnamara · 7m ago
What can I say? Feels weird to include a JSON library in a bootloader.
nextaccountic · 25m ago
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 · 12m ago
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.
userbinator · 5h ago
I'm a huge proponent of customisation, but for me, the less I have to see or even think about GRUB, the better.
vidarh · 4h ago
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 · 29m ago
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.
Grosvenor · 4h ago
I can finally make my computer look like the ones from hackers! Awesome.
nico · 3h ago
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 :)
PebblesHD · 4h ago
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.
kej · 4h ago
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 · 4h ago
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
voidfunc · 4h ago
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 · 2h ago
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.
treyd · 4h ago
I'm pretty sure there is an option for this, holding shift makes it show the menu.
arp242 · 4h ago
What if you don't remember the key you need to press?
necovek · 41m ago
You RTFM (which can be a quick search or LLM chat away on another device like your phone).
noisy_boy · 1h ago
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 · 1h ago
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.
WD-42 · 4h ago
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!
Eg: https://github.com/kexecboot/kexecboot
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.
Btw, how does grub figure out in what resolution to draw the interface?
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?
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.
Might rewatch it soon, been listening to the soundtrack while working lately :)