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?

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.

    BEEP BOP. bidiedi-bop. bip.

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.

Eg: https://github.com/kexecboot/kexecboot

I do wish more effort was made to polish all the bits and pieces because all of this exists in some form. I suppose some of it is that everyone is doing their own slightly different thing; NixOS lets you boot to earlier generations, but only by completely turning the filesystem inside out, OpenSUSE can do snapshots, but using BTRFS which means that not many other distros even can use the same implementation, ZFS is the bee's knees but on Linux licensing always adds friction, Ubuntu made boot super smooth via Plymouth but it's very... Ubuntu.

Anyways. If you're in a position to run Linux on ZFS, may I suggest zfsbootmenu?

> ZFSBootMenu leverages the features of modern OpenZFS to allow users to choose among multiple "boot environments" (which may represent different versions of a Linux distribution, earlier snapshots of a common root, or entirely different distributions), manipulate snapshots in a pre-boot environment and, for the adventurous user, even bootstrap a system installation via zfs recv.

- https://docs.zfsbootmenu.org/en/v3.0.x/index.html

On NixOS we get one new grub menu entry per “deployment”, be it when you deploy to another host or the local one. They both then get a new grub entry. Of course you can still shoot yourself in the foot by making your system inaccessible remotely, by screwing up ssh config for example. There’s also a solution for that called deploy-rs which has a magic rollback feature which rolls back the system if it can’t connect back to the computer initiating the deployment https://github.com/serokell/deploy-rs?tab=readme-ov-file#mag...

I’m using these features since multiple years now and can vouch for them.

Not exactly related to your initial question but I also have my system build in CI and do some playwright tests which become more and more comprehensive as time passes. This all gives me quite a lot of confidence I’ll find an issue early or be able to revert back.

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.

I'm pretty sure there is an option for this, holding shift makes it show the menu.

What if you don't remember the key you need to press?

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.

Why would you actually want this? Such a weird desire to hide this kind of stuff because it's so inconsequential in my mind.

Oh my gosh, that one’s a gem! Rage Linus on the top right, smug confused Balmer on the bottom… the Gates mugshot is icing on the cake. awesome!

This, wobbly windows and rain effects. I wouldn't use any of that today, but it captivated me, at a time when customizing windows was becoming more cumbersome with each release.

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 :)

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

You can set the resolution explicitly, otherwise it will render at resolution UEFI started the boot with.

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.

I suspect it may depend on the monitor, not the bootloader. Some of them have a longer delay when turning on than others. My 4k connected over displayport has no problem, but my old VGA/DVI monitor that I use for homelab recovery cannot turn on fast enough.

Check your bios for primary display. If you manage to have the bios screen on the external display, it's very likely that the following bootloader will also use it. Works well on my ThinkPad+Dock.

Check the Thinkpad firmware settings to make sure the external monitor and/or dock GPU is the primary display which is effective during boot. On some PC's though you will then see nothing during boot on the laptop's own screen, sometimes even when the laptop is standalone. If Initial Graphics Device is set for "Auto" instead of a specific device, that may be OK but also may not be any different than you have now.

The external monitor may also have multiple inputs to choose from, like VGA, DVI, HDMI, which also might be set to "Auto" scan for which one is active, and that can sometimes take more time to succeed than it takes to boot. If so, using the Input Option settings on the external monitor you may be able to specify your preferred input connection exclusively, or as default, and then be able to see something during the time that it's blank now.

Okay. I have a laptop here with windows, haiku and Linux. And actually the grub (2) configuration to get haiku to start was strange. What exactly do I install best to replace grub?

Or alternatively, I have a PC with only Void Linux. Compatibility mode for booting, since uefi mode did not work (I dont know why - some secure boot shenanigans? MBR vs GPT mode? There is no EFI partition as well). What could replace grub there?

I thought the advent of UFEI would finally put GRUB to rest.

Worse, if you dual boot and each OS installs its own GRUB you can get all kinds of silly situations where one GRUB will chain load to another GRUB and then boot the OS.

Why not just hit F12 (or whatever) and UEFI gives you this nice little menu of all your boot options right there, before installers can come in and ruin it. (Like Windows that always seems to barge in and put itself on top trashing whatever you had before.)

Setting GRUB up with full-disk encryption and BTRFS snapshots is braindead easy. Maybe it'd be just as easy with Gummiboot or rEFInd, but you know what they say about fixing things that aren't broken.

I am perfectly fine with grub and os-prober.

Grub can't even boot my windows install. Maybe it's possible but after spending 4 hours on it I didn't feel like trying anymore.

I don't get the hate. It just works for me, always has. And I have dual boot with encryption. It is such a small thing in the grand scheme of things.

Now compare that with booting on arm...

> Grub is like a turd that won't flush. It's been completely unnecessary for years, is massively overcomplicated

shim + grub suck, but bare bones EFI sucks way more, generally speaking. Vendors of consumer-oriented EFI platforms ("client platforms") are batshit insane; they don't offer UEFI console redirection to/from the serial port even if the motherboard has one; they expose neither secure boot configuration nor boot options management to the user, and so on. A purely EFI-based boot loader such as systemd-boot or rEFInd remains the least annoying choice, IMO.

> completely unnecessary

Is it? How can you boot from encrypted volumes without it? I looked into systemd-boot, but I don't think it's capable.

What I don't understand is why GRUB needs to be regenerated every time you add a kernel or OS.

Make the bootloader smart enough to find read the underlying filesystems and find kernels. rEFInd does it. If I put in a bootable USB or install Windows on a second SSD, it just shows up on the menu without explicitly demanding it.

Maybe you have to say "/boot needs to be one of n well-supported filesystem types" but one-size-fits-most is probably good enough, relying on something GRUB for the people running ZFS-atop-RAID6-atop-a-collection-of-128-USB-floppy-drives.

RIP. Pouring one out for Linux loader.

Hehe I was like: What?! Grub was LiLo’s successor and much better! What happened to the time?!

Back in the day I had a cool self made theme from Ghost in the Shell, I remember making some very obscure image format from some jpeg I found online. Man what time I have put into customizing my Linux experiences. The computer was truly a (well trimmed) pet. With desktops on kubes with fish inside and reflections etc.

Oh dear, you transported me back to 2003

ITYM Lilililililililililili....