Beef up your Grub Loader

I’m currently dual booting Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Windows XP Professional from my computer. So, I have to use a multiboot loader like Grub. So, everytime I boot, a text based screen comes up asking me the operating system my computer should boot into. Works fine for me.

A couple of days ago, I met a friend who’s running OpenSUSE on his computer and was shocked to see his GRUB loader screen. It had a nice graphical image in the background while mine was just a plain text screen. I checked the GRUB loaders of other popular distros and came up with a conclusion:  When we compare it to the beautiful grub of distros like OpenSUSE, Fedora and PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu default grub screen looks ugly. Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros but nobody provided any ‘GRUBsplash images’ for it by default. So, I decided to take the matter into my hands and get a GRUB splash image for my computer.

There is a package available for Ubuntu called the GRUB-splashimages. It can be installed using the Synaptic Package Manager or using the following command in the Terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install grub-splashimages

For Kubuntu, typ the following in the Konsole:

$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-grub-splashimages

This package is provided by ‘The Linux Bootsplash Project’ Their home page is located here.

After installing the package, visit the /boot/grub/splashimages folder using your file browser. You’ll see a collection of .gz files each containing a .xpm image. Take a look at all the images and select the best one. However the current package comes with only 16 images (most of which are boring). There’s a nice collection available at schragehome too. Or you can create your own! Just copy the .xpm.gz files to /boot/grub/splashimages folder.

To set a Splash Image:

Open the Terminal / Konsole:

Go to the folder.

$ cd /boot/grub

Then, link the chosen image using:

$ sudo ln -s splashimages/mummy.xpm.gz splash.xpm.gz

Note: I’m using the mummy.xpm.gz. If you want to use another, just replace mummy with the name of your image package!

Sometimes you may get an error:

ln: creating symbolic link `splash.xpm.gz’: File exists

Don’t panic, This means that there’s already a link present. Just go to the /boot/grub folder and delete the splash.xpm.gz link! Run the command again. You should not receive any errors.

Now to update the GRUB package.

$ sudo apt-get install grub-splashimages

Restart you computer and see the cool new Grub Loader with splash image of your choice!

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