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Full Version: [Linux] Beautify Grub2 Menu
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Making the grub boot menu look good was an easy task since the new Ubuntu versions have all defaulted to grub2.

Grub2 supports the use of background images so inserting one was an easy task.

Grab a good background image, i used this one since it was already xbmc branded, 1920x1080, and has a simple color scheme.

- Copy the image you downloaded to xbmc, i placed mine in /home/xbmc/xbmc.png

- You will need to modify the following line in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme, change it from
Code:
WALLPAPER=/usr/share/images/desktop-base/moreblue-orbit-grub.png
to
Code:
WALLPAPER="/home/xbmc/xbmc.png"

- Rebuild grub.cfg by running
Code:
sudo update-grub

- Grub will let you know if it found the picture during update-grub
Code:
# update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
[color=red]Found background image: xbmc.png[/color]
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-27-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-27-generic
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
done

- Reboot to check it out!

In my case i wanted more than just a pretty background so i changed the grub text coloring to blend into the image (be careful with this one).
I changed the text to be black unless highlighted by modifying the following in /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
Code:
COLOR_NORMAL="white/black"
COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="magenta/black"
to
/etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
Code:
COLOR_NORMAL="black/black"
COLOR_HIGHLIGHT="light-gray/black"

I then ran
Code:
sudo update-grub
to apply the changes.

One last thing that was bugging me was the naming. I wanted something that made sense instead of the ubuntu kernel version and "/sdx loader" for windows.
I changed this by directly modifying the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file created by update-grub. Note that you will have to modify this file every time you run update-grub since it will overwrite any changes you make.

The menu items are listed as menuentry variables, modifying them will change the grub display.
I changed the Windows 7 entry from
Code:
menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" {
to
Code:
menuentry "Windows 7" {

Hope this helps some of you guys out there.
Good luck!

Reference https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

[NOTE] You can always just make all your changes in /boot/grub/grub.cfg if you wouldn't mind having to do it all over again if/when it gets overwritten
Looks good, you should checkout burg. It has many nice themes and its pretty easy to mod.

cheers