Re-ordering boot menu

Jeffrey Lapinski

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What is the best way to change the leaderboard and get the distro that I want to be in control?
 


You might give this a try: GRUB Customizer

You'll need to install from Ubuntu-based distro, I think, but other distros may be possible. And you'll want to be careful.... messing with GRUB can mean breaking your system again! :eek::D

Cheers
 
I am getting pretty good at putting it back together though!
I believe I said once before something like, "You'll soon be teaching this class!" :D:D

Few people follow in the Wizard's footsteps... (maybe due to the smell :eek::D)... but you've done a fine job. I fumbled along a bit some time back and had 4 OS'es multi-booting, back before I met Chris. But these days I find VirtualBox to be good enough for me, or live booting on a DVD or USB.

Cheers
 
Few people follow in the Wizard's footsteps... (maybe due to the smell :eek::D)... but you've done a fine job.
Thanks! I feel bad for annoying him! However, he's taught me more about Linux in the last few weeks than anyone has in the last few years!

I am running 7 on my 2nd laptop currently (all Ubuntu or Debian based) and it is working quite well! I want to get the hang of the process using Debian based down before I start to introduce different (Arch, etc) based distros into the mix.
 
Smell, schmell, I heard that Stan.

I would advise against using Grub Customizer, unless Daniel Richter has made significant improvements with his last couple of releases (which he may have).

I last used it about 2 years ago, and it was a nightmare with multiple Distros, and a nightmare I spent weeks cleaning up after , after I had removed it.

I have to go but I'll come back with more detail when I can.

Wiz
 
I'm glad that Wizard intervened about GRUB Customizer.... I have used it before with no problems, so I didn't think too much about it not being able to control the multi-multi-boot scenarios. The page I linked to also has extensive GRUB and GRUB 2 tutorials that might be worth the read, but I did not carefully evaluate them either, and Wizard might also spot errors or deficiencies there. If they are any good though, they might make a nice reference for you. Here they are: GRUB and GRUB 2.

Cheers
 
Thanks for sharing those links, Stan, I will take a look at them :)

Here's a (believe it or not) brief summary of some of my thoughts on Grub Customizer.


Grub Customizer was released by Daniel Richter in 2007.

For the most part, it is installed via Ubuntu’s development of PPAs (Personal Package Archives), but some Distros actually ship it as installed, as Peach does nowadays.


chris@PeachOSI-Xfce-Study:~$ apt-cache policy grub-customizer
grub-customizer:
Installed: 5.0.6-0ubuntu1~ppa1x
Candidate: 5.0.6-0ubuntu1~ppa1x
Version table:
*** 5.0.6-0ubuntu1~ppa1x 100
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Launchpad have, at

https://launchpad.net/~danielrichter2007/+archive/ubuntu/grub-customizer

… that current version is 5.0.8.

My notes on using it go back to 1 December 2015, at which time I was likely using a version around 4.0.6-0ubuntu1~ppa1u . Following that the 5.06 series started.

I last used it from the Peach OSI environment. The “victim” Distro was Peach OSI 16.04, based on Ubuntu’s 16.04, and so this would have been some time after April 2016, so I am guessing about 2 years ago, and the version would have been around 5.0.6-0ubuntu1~ppa1y .

Grub Customizer has a number of functions, but two of the main features that attract people are

  1. Its capability of structuring your Grub Menu in an order that you choose, and customising the entries, and
  2. its capability of inserting a background image or theme of your choice to brighten up your Grub Menu
The outcomes of these operations are acceptable.

BUT (Wizard’s but is not far behind him), there are two major problems I found with the versions that I used, one is tiresome at least, and the other is a PITA at its nicest.

  1. Following is a screenshot taken at the time I last used GC, taken from what was basically the end of my Menu. You see that entry for Ubuntu (likely 16.04 MATE) and with the expansion of the submenu, there are in fact ten (1) entries. GC had/perhaps still has, no capability of moving a block of entries at a time upwards or downwards, you have to move them one line at a time to where you want it to be placed, then navigate back to where you were and move the next line, and so on, ad infinitum.


W5DQnfB.png



So with an extreme example, which is mine currently, where I have just installed a Distro on /dev/sda50 on the Toshiba, I might have 500 lines to move, one at a time, in order to move my bottom Distro to the top. On the Dell Inspiron, currently with 14 Distros, 140 lines.


2. Following my decision, at that time, to undo the effects of Grub Customizer and remove it, I found that its Revert feature did not undo all the changes I had made using GC. Furthermore, for some two (2) months following, I found my Grub Order mysteriously change from time to time, including the placing of false entries, even of Distros I had removed from my System. There were occasions that were outside of the usual events having taken place that can affect your Grub Menu order, including but not limited to
    1. Major kernel updates
    2. (occasional) firmware update
    3. New Shim-signed
    4. New grub-efi-signed, grub-common – type events
    5. Installing a new Distro
The changes I attribute to the after-effects of Grub Customizer having been used.

I have more material I could provide here, but I may save that for a separate Thread. Suffice it to say I won’t be using Grub Customizer again unless I have it on good authority that these problems have been remedied.

I can change the order of my Grub Menu simply by planning some Timeshift Restorations.

Cheers

Wizard
 

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