As useful as it is, the GRUB boot loader is not the prettiest girl in town. The interface is only as beautiful as a text-based interface can be. Even though some people can live with it just fine, some others wish they could beautify the look a little bit.

If you don’t mind meddling with command lines, you can apply some eye candy (and more functionalities) to GRUB with the help of BURG.

Playing Between The Lines

According to the explanation in the Community Ubuntu Documentation:

BURG stands for Brand-new Universal loadeR from GRUB. It’s based on GRUB and adds features like new object format and configurable menu system.

To add BURG from within your Ubuntu installation, you have to use command lines. But worry not, young Jedi! It’s not as scary as it sounds. As long as you follow everything to the letter – no pun intended – you should be just fine.

But before we begin, let’s look at the original boot loader text-based interface that we are trying to change.

The first step you should do is to log into your Ubuntu installation. Then open “Terminal” to execute all the command lines needed to download, install, and configure BURG. You can find Terminal inside “Applications – Accessories“, or you can also use the search function to find it.

By default, BURG is not included in Ubuntu’s standard repository. So you should add the server that hosts BURG files to the repository by executing this command line:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bean123ch/burg

To avoid mistyping, it’s easier to copy and paste that line to Terminal, and press Enter to execute it.

Then you should download and install BURG (loader, themes and emulator). Use this command to do that:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install burg

The process could take a while, depending on the speed of your internet connection. It’s essential that you use a stable connection to get the best result. From my experiments, I found out that an unstable connection will cause download problems: some of the components might not download completely, and the installation process will fail.

Configuring BURG

After we finish the download and installation process, the next step is to configure BURG. The Terminal will display something like this:

Press Enter to go to the next screen, and another Enter to skip again.

You will arrive at this “Configuring burg-pc” screen. This one is a little tricky because hitting Enter will not bring you anywhere. After several trial and errors, I found out that you have to select the “OK” option by using the right arrow key on the keyboard or by pressing tab, then after the “OK” is selected, you can press Enter to continue.

The following screen will ask you to choose which device is the “GRUB install device“. If your computer has only one hard drive, you will only see one device. The problem is, how to select it? To avoid accidentally skipping this configuration, press Space to select the device before pressing Enter.

Navigating BURG

The configuration is now done. You can restart your system and the GRUB boot loader menu will be replaced by BURG.

Navigating within BURG is easy: use the arrow keys on the keyboard to choose the operating system and Enter to load it.

You can also switch between themes easily by pressing F2 to bring up the list of available themes, move between the items with arrow keys, and hit Enter to choose one. Here are some examples of available themes.

Other Function keys that you can use are F1 for Help and F3 to change screen resolution.

Installing BURG From Windows

BURG also comes with a Windows installer. You can get the installer from BURG’s download page. Using it is also very easy: install it,

And click “Add Boot Entry” under “Programs – Burg” menu.

However, I found this method to be working only if you installed Ubuntu from within Windows. So for those who installed Ubuntu alongside Windows, you have to stick with the command lines.

To be honest, I’m a total newbie when it comes to Ubuntu (Linux) and command lines. I had to repeat the experiment several times just to get it (almost) right, and I’m still trying to grasp everything that I’ve done and described here. So, if you Linux experts out there have found things that I missed here, please do not hesitate to share your input in the comments below.

Dual boot means you have two operating systems (most likely Windows and a Linux distro) on your computer. You get some kind of menu to choose which operating system to boot when you start your computer and depending upon your choice, the appropriate system boots up. More often than not, if you are dual-booting with Windows and Linux, chances are that the menu you see at boot time is the GRUB boot menu.

By default, GRUB is installed by many distributions and is available as an option with others. It automatically detects the other operating systems present on your computer and adds them as an entry in the menu along with the Linux distribution you are currently installing. All this happens without any additional steps during the Linux installation process if you install Linux after Windows is already present on the disk.

If you go the other route, that is — install Windows after Linux, or if you play with partitions on your hard drive too much; you can end up messing up GRUB. In that case, depending upon what you just did, you might only be able to boot into Windows or GRUB might fail to display any menu at all. In either case, before you panic and rush to forums or tech support, there is a simple fix that will most likely alleviate your woes. Its to restore GRUB, and you can do it in a snap. Let’s see how.

First off, as is often the case when a new version to a popular software is released, both versions continue to be in use for some time before the newly version is adopted. The same with GRUB. Sadly, the procedure is a little different for both versions and we shall tackle both of them here.

First off, you need a Live CD handy. Your Linux distro CD should work just fine if it installed GRUB on your computer in the first place. You can also use Knoppix or SystemRescueCD. We will be using Ubuntu Live CD. Keep in mind that the CD uses same version of GRUB. This can be insured by using the disc that you used to install Linux.

Boot off from the Live CD and give it some time before you can view the desktop. Next up – fire up terminal and get ready for some command line action. Before we proceed keep in mind that hd0 refers to the first hard disk on your computer, second will be hd1 and so on. Similarly (hd0,2) means second partition on the first hard disk.

GRUB

• Type sudo grub, this will give you a the GRUB prompt. Now you can enter GRUB specific commands.
• Type find /boot/grub/stage1. This should return the location of GRUB files on your hard disk.
• Next up, use the location returned above and issue the command root(hdX, Y). For example, if the previous command returned (hd0, 1), you should issue root(hd0, 1)
• Next issue the command setup(hd0) or hdX as the case may be. PLEASE NOTE: This will overwrite the MBR, which is fine if you were using GRUB in the first place or you install Windows after Linux. If you had some other bootloader or custom configuration, you should watch out.
• Type quit to exit GRUB and then reboot the computer.

GRUB 2

• Enter sudo mount /dev/XdYZ/ /mnt where X can be either ‘h’ or ‘s’ and Y represents the hard disk number and Z represents the partition. eg mount /dev/sda3 /mnt, in which case /dev/sda3 is your Linux system partition. You can use sudo fdisk -l, to list all partitions if you are not sure about the system partition. NOTE: If you have a separate boot partition, you will need to mount it explicitly at /mnt/boot



• Then issue the command sudo grub-install –root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX X being the hard disk where you want to restore GRUB.
• Next, unmount the partition via sudo umount /mnt and then reboot your computer.

After running these steps, you should be able to restore GRUB within 5 minutes. If things go well and if GRUB was the reason for your troubles, you just fixed them. If these didn’t fix your problem, you might want to have a closer look at your hard disk’s health and partitions. You can use GParted or the Ubuntu Live CD or any other Live USB/CD that suits you.

Have you ever run into booting troubles? How did you fix it? Shoot off any tips in the comments, that might be helpful to fellow readers!

GRUBv2 is the next iteration of the immensely popular GRUB boot loader. It offers improved capabilities like a graphical interface and better design. If you are fan of mods like me and tried the previous tutorial with GRUBv2, you would have realized it no longer works that way. So let’s update the steps and see how we can create a custom GRUB 2 splash image.

• Choose a photo of your choice and open it up in GIMP. Unlike the previous tutorial for GRUB, where you had to choose fairly subdued images which didn’t have a lot of colors or gradients, you can be a bit more extravagant with image selection in GRUB 2
• Once you have it open, resize it to 640 x 480 pixels. (You can use different dimensions, but that requires a bit of extra effort as we shall see below). To do so, go to the image menu and choose scale.

• You can modify the image to your liking, perhaps add a motivational quote or your company’s logo or anything you want.
• Now go to File > Save as. In the dialog that appears, choose to save the file as .tga file.

With the image ready, its time to get into configuration mode. A lot has changed in GRUB2, so read along even if you are familiar with the procedure for the legacy GRUB loader.

• First off, you need to copy the file to the appropriate directory so that you can tell GRUB about it. So copy the file you just created to /boot/grub directory.
• Fire up your favorite text editor and point it to /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme. Now look for a line mentioning image files. On my system, it is line number 16 of the said file and looks like this:

• We need to edit it and replace the image file name, with the name of the file you saved in previous steps (sunrise_splash in my case)

We are almost done here, now issue the sudo update-grub2 command and verify it completes successfully. It tells you if it found the image you mentioned. If it doesn’t, it most likely means that you missed something in the steps mentioned above.

You can refer to this Debian Wiki page for more details on GRUBv2 splash images. The wiki also lists template files that you can use as a guide when creating your own custom splashimages. If you want to use higher resolution images and not merely 640 x 480 ones, you can do so by editing /etc/default/grub. Remove the # sign if it exists on the line that lists - GRUB_GFXMODE and change its value to the custom resolution you want to use. Keep in mind that not all resolutions may be available. You can view a list of available resolutions by pressing ‘c’ on the GRUB menu and then using the command vbeinfo.

If all goes well, you should be able to view your custom splashscreen the next time GRUB menu is displayed. If the image is not displayed correctly you might want to change the resolution to match the one listed in the /etc/default/grub file. Remember the default is 640 x 480. In case you are running short on imaginative ideas, you can install the grub2-splashimages package, that will give you a set of images that you can use as a splashscreen.

Give it a spin and let us know how things went. We would also love to see your custom splashimages if you feel like sharing them with the world!

1. Get lightning fast and clever at the command line

You can use keyboard shortcuts and other command line tricks to make entering commands easier and faster. You might already know about the ‘tab’ key which completes partial commands and even file and directory names.

Here are some other keyboard shortcuts you can use within terminal:

Also don’t forget to check out 4 websites where you can learn cool command line tricks

2. Launch Ubuntu Linux Applications with keyboard

There are two ways you can achieve this:

• Use applications like Launchy or Gnome-Do that make it easier to launch applications by typing a few characters of the application’s name.
• Or you can summon gconf editor (Alt+F2 then type gconf-editor and hit enter), and navigate to apps > metacity > global_keybindings, double click on any of the run_command_N and type in the keyboard shortcut you want to assign to an application then make a mental note of the number N. Then go to apps > metacity > keybinding_commands and double click on command_N (N being the number you used above) and type in the command you want to run. As an example if you wanted to run Firefox you would type in firefox.

Also check out these Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts you might not know about.

3. Start from wherever you left off

You can make Ubuntu remember the applications you had open when you last logged out, so that when you log back in again you’ll find all those applications running and you can resume right from where you left off.

To achieve this go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications, then go to the options tab and check "Automatically remember running applications when logging out"

4. Create a Separate Ubuntu Linux Home Partition

New versions of Ubuntu arrive every 6 months. Although you can upgrade to the latest version via the update manager, sometimes the upgrade doesn’t work as expected so some users like to do a fresh clean install.

The disadvantage with that of course is that you lose data you had in your home directory. To overcome this you can create a separate Home partition when you are installing Ubuntu, size it according to your requirements and then when you decide to install Ubuntu the next time, simply specify this partition as the Home partition (by choosing /home as the mount point).

All your files and data on the Home partition will be preserved even after a fresh install.

5. Update and Install Ubuntu Linux Software Without Internet Connection

There are lots of way to do this, the easiest of all is to use APTonCD. APTonCD allows you to create CDs and DVD’s containing all the packages you want, which you can then use to install software on computers without an internet connection.

Note that APTonCD requires you to have an internet connection (or downloaded packages) to create the installed media. However once the media is ready you don’t need an internet connection for any of the machines you want to install the software on. Insert the appropriate CD/DVD and use apt-get as you would normally.

6. Install new fonts, Microsoft fonts and improve font rendering

Ubuntu doesn’t offer many choices when it comes to the fonts. However you can easily install new fonts including those from Microsoft like Arial, Verdana, impact and many more. You can use different sites to find the kind of font you are looking for.

7. Use PPAs, Install latest versions of software

There are a lot of steps that a software has to go through before it becomes part of Ubuntu or becomes available through the Ubuntu repositories. While all those steps lend additional stability, it generally means that you don’t get the latest versions of all the software as soon as they are released.

If you like to stay on the cutting edge, you can search for Personal Package Archives for your favorite software on Launchpad and add those to your installation’s software sources. I briefly touched on PPAs and how to use them here. If that seems like too much work, you can also download the latest deb packages and install them by double clicking (you won’t get automatic updates for the software if you install it this way).

Remember you might get into an occasional trouble or two with the latest versions, but mostly it wouldn’t be catastrophic. You can always hop over to the Ubuntu Forums to get quick help.

8. Be the root

The root account is disabled by default on Ubuntu installations, mainly to prevent you from doing something you didn’t intend to do. However if you "promise to be careful" you can enable root account as follows:

1. Type sudo passwd root and provide a root password.
2. Then head on over to System > Administration > Login Window, go to the Security tab and check "Enable local system administrator login"

You should now be able to login as root from the Login prompt. As an alternative you can use "sudo su" to provide your password and get root prompt.

9. Run Windows applications and games

Who wouldn’t like to play Counter Strike on Ubuntu (unless of course you are completely not into it) or perhaps even run Photoshop? Well it is very much possible and here is how to do it.

10. Shorten boot time with profiling

Ubuntu Linux devs have done a great job with the boot time, Jaunty is fast and Karmic is slotted to be even faster. There is however a bit more you can do by profiling your boot. Profiling lets Ubuntu make a list of all the files that are accessed during bootup, it then sorts the files according to how they are stored on your hard disk. So the next time the system is booted, the files would be read faster.

To profile boot you need to follow these steps

• At the grub menu highlight the kernel you boot most often.
• Press e for edit.
• Choose the line starting with kernel and press e again. Now add the word profile to the end of this line. Hit Enter and then press b to boot

Note that while profiling, the system will boot slower this one time, the next time however you should see an improvement. Also keep in mind that all this is machine-dependent and also depends on the arrangement of files on your hard disk, so the difference you see might not be huge, or even nil in some cases.

11. Try out different Ubuntu Linux Desktop Environments and Desktop Managers

If you are looking for something different than the default Gnome interface, you should check out alternative desktop managers that you can use. If it is a complete Desktop Environment you are looking for, KDE4 has come a long way and is now impressively usable and fun. You can do a "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" to get KDE.

12. Create a media center or a media server

It would be great if you could easily browse and manage your huge collection of music, videos and pictures. Mesmerized by Windows Media Center’s slick interface? Wait till you see what all cool options you have to turn your Ubuntu system into a media center. You can even access your media collection on your phone, PSP or a different computer if you set up a media server on your Ubuntu machine.

13. Share Firefox profile data with Windows

Many people use Windows and Linux on the same machine. If you are one of them, there would have been times you couldn’t find that bookmark you created or password you stored when you were using Firefox from within Windows. Check out how you can share Firefox profile data across operating systems without syncing it over the web (works best if you have the same version of Firefox in both OS’s). For different computers you can of course use Weave.

14. Customize Nautilus to your liking

Nautilus is the default file manager on Ubuntu. While you may be content with what it does, there is lots more you can make it do. You can use extensions to improve functionality and even add custom functionality to Nautilus

15. Compile your own Kernel

If you can’t find something to keep you busy for the weekend and you have your customization hat on, how about building a kernel to specifically meet your requirements? This is frankly more of a learning experience. Some might say that it enables you to use just the features and drivers you require, but if everything is working fine with the kernel supplied and you don’t have any interest in the Linux kernel, skip ahead this one is not for you.

If however you require some of the experimental features of the kernel, or need it to be compiled in some other special way we say you check out this guide within Ubuntu Documentation.

16. Change Usplash Screen and create a custom splash screen for GRUB

So you didn’t count the last one? Here is another one then. A Usplash screen is Ubuntu text and a logo with a progress bar that you see when you boot up Ubuntu.

If you would like to change that to something more interesting follow these steps. What better way to show your Linux fu than customizing the very first screen that appears? You can create a custom splash screen using one of your photos, GIMP and a little tweaking. Here is the how-to.

Know some more tips or great hacks for Ubuntu Linux users? Sure you do, go ahead let us know about them in the comments.

StartUp Manager can be used to achieve this easily. You can install StartUp Manager by using your distribution’s package manager. Or check here. Once installed, it can be found under

System > Administration > StartUp Manager.

StartUp Manager can be used to easily customize a number of options that would otherwise require you to get your hands dirty by editing configuration files. As a start, you can change boot options such as the selection timeout and default operating system. If you have multiple operating systems, a useful option here is to make the Last Used operating system as the default choice, which would automatically boot the one you used the last time. Such a setting can be quite handy when you have a clear favorite in terms of operating systems and others are just installed for completeness.

You can also change the display resolution and the color depth if you are experiencing any problems with the display of the main menu. Uncheck “Show bootloader menu” if you don’t want to see the menu, and boot the default operating system each time. “Show bootsplash” can be used to add an image as background to the bootloader menu. We did a complete tutorial on it some time back. “Show text during boot” provides you with textual feedback of what is currently happening in the boot process.

The appearance tab allows you to customize the look of the bootloader menu as well as the Usplash theme. You can add colors to the bootloader menu, pick and choose the ones you like. A Usplash theme governs the progress bar display during the boot process. You can find some Usplash themes here, click on “Manage Usplash themes” and add the one you downloaded, then select the one you like and next time you boot, it would be there to greet you.

That is not all by any stretch of imagination. StartUp Manager allows you to do pretty advanced stuff. You can password-protect the bootloader or only recovery mode entries (a good choice) or the boot options by simply placing a check against the option and specifying the password.

If you are bothered by how cluttered the bootloader gets after a kernel upgrade, you can limit the number of entries from here in. Uncheck “Create boot option for recovery mode” to remove the recovery mode altogether if you are paranoid about someone getting into your system through recovery mode root prompt.

StartUp Manager is a no fuss tool which greatly simplifies tweaking and customizing of bootloader options and helps you manage Grub and Usplash settings easily without having to go in and tinker with the configuration files yourself. What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments.