Sep
30
2010

Get a Graphical Boot Loader with BURG

BURG is an amazing bootloader which can replace the plain text based Grub2 menus with some really cool graphics and icons.This bootloader is being developed by Bean123.

BURG stands for Brand-new Universal loadeR from GRUB
As you can see, if you reverse GRUB you get BURG.

Ubuntu,Linux Mint and many other Linux Distros use Grub2 as the default boot manager.While Linux Mint has nice green background image for the GRUB2 Menu, Ubuntu has a plain black and white boot menu.
The grub2 menu uses text to display the different menu entries.With BURG you can choose from a variety of themes supporting both icons and text to display the menu entries.

Here are some screenshots of BURG Boot Menu

Installing BURG Loader in Ubuntu or Linux Mint

Installing the BURG Bootloader is extremely easy if you are using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) or Linux Mint 9

Just run the following commands in terminal.Enter your password if prompted.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bean123ch/burg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install burg-pc burg burg-themes burg-emu
sudo burg-install /dev/sda
sudo update-burg

If the installer prompts you about anything just press Enter.
Thats it.The installer automatically adds entries for your Windows,Ubuntu and other operating systems in the Boot Menu.

You now have to reboot your computer and you will be presented with a really cool Boot Menu.
Press t to open Theme Selection Menu and check out all the different themes.

If the above steps do not work then please read this wiki to for more advanced details on installing the BURG Loader.This wiki also includes instructions for a Wubi install of Ubuntu.
http://code.google.com/p/burg/wiki/InstallUbuntu

BURG Resources

BURG is a brand-new boot loader based on GRUB. It uses a new object format which allows it to be built in a wider range of OS, including Linux/Windows/OSX/Solaris/FreeBSD, etc. It also has a highly configurable menu system which works in both text and graphic mode.

Code: http://code.google.com/p/burg
Document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Burg
Forum: http://www.burgloader.com/bbs
Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/burg-devel
Screenshots: http://code.google.com/p/burg/wiki/Screenshots

I hope Ubuntu developers ditch the plain text based GRUB2 and use BURG instead as the default Boot Loader in the future versions of Ubuntu.

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About the Author: Bharat Balegere

Bharat Balegere is a 27 year old blogger from Bengaluru. He is a technology enthusiast and loves tinkering with computers and usb drives.

14 Comments + Add Comment

  • everything was installed properly.. but i’m getting the same old menu.. i followed all the steps for the 2nd time.. it said the software is already installed.. even after restarting again i did not get it…. what am i supposed to do now?

  • i executed the following commands in the terminal..
    sudo burg-install /dev/sda
    sudo update-burg

    everything working now….

    pls add those two commands to ur blog

    • Thanks Abhijeeth.
      I updated the code.

  • BURG looks great… i was bored of seeing the same oll menu…Thankx a lot Bharat..
    chiva, proto, sora_clean, ubuntu, ubuntu2 and winter themes are really good..
    now please tell me how to set a image on my hard disk as a theme…
    also tell me how to edit the options on the theme..

  • Can You Please Help me Install BURG in Fedora….
    Please provide me the steps…..

  • FINALLY something that will look as good on my Hackintosh as rEFIt looks on my Macbook. Thanks for sharing. I’ll try it tomorrow.

  • Can I use Burg only with win xp / vista / win 7

    • I will post an article on using burg to multi boot windows operating systems.

  • am kinda new to ubunto
    i copied your lines exactly
    i have win 7 and ubunto 10.10

    when i restarted ubunto is stuck at log in screen also it don’t allow my mouse to move

    how can i reverse that !! ,

    thanks in advance

  • Dear Bahart:
    I checked around through the internet and found a new project ” Burg4Dos” http://sourceforge.net/projects/burg4dos/
    http://code.google.com/p/burg4dos/ (Chinese site)
    It is a new project that lets you configure burg from Windows and boot without overwriting the native Windows MBR. This lets you try out burg and multi-boot many flavors of linux with very little risk
    I just want to ask you if you’ve a background about it and did you know a good tutorial for using it , or could you guide me to use it .
    Thanks and best regards.

  • I try and install the PPA on Linux Mint 14 and it cannot find the ppa.

  • How to install it on Kali Linux

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