[Tutorial] My Photo on GRUB

[desertwind]

This is a little tut to add custom graphics background for grub. May be known to many, but will be a delight for newbies.

1. Open any image in gimp (You'll get better results if your image doesn't have too many colors)
2. Scale (Image>Scale Image) the image to 640x480
3. Select Image>Mode>Indexed
4. Enter max. no of colors 14 and dithering None
5. Save the file as type .xpm (Eg: myimage.xpm)
6. gzip the image (gzip myimage.xpm)
7. Move the file to /boot/grub/ (sudo cp myimage.xpm.gz /boot/grub/)
8. Backup /boot/menu.lst (sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst_backup)
9. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add the following line before the OS list. If a similar line is there already, edit it accordingly

splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/myimage.xpm.gz
​

replace hd0,0 with your actual disk no. (hd0,0 is hda1; hd0,1 is hda2; hd1,0 is hdb1) and image.xpm.gz with actual filename.

10. Reboot and enjoy!

For more detailed info and sample images: *ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/grub-images/
For ultimate eye candy experience throughout booting: *www.bootsplash.org/Welcome_to_the_graphical_world_of_Linux

 

[mehulved]

The last one is what I am looking for, let's see if I can give GUI bootslpash to my gentoo. But, CLI is great doesn't take much time and gives a lot of info.

 

[gary4gar]

good work riyas
but as mehul pointed out CLI works faster than the slash screen so will try it but will not use it

 

[desertwind]

Ya, even i don't use bootsplash, even though I've tried. It'll increase the booting time, and sometime based on the theme, you won't be able to get some error messages.

But I'm using splashimage for GRUB. It's a nice little trick.

 

[amitava82]

Startup-Manager (SUM) is another nice piece of software to change grub n loading screen. Total GUI. I'm using this one. *ubuntusoftware.info/sum.html if you have good sources.list then you will find in synaptic. try searching first.