Possible to have a boot like OSX?

Cheetah Designs · 24 Apr 2011 at 00:14

I dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu and I was wondering if it was possible to have a similar boot to OSX.

What I mean by this is that I have my computer automatically boot into Ubuntu without showing a boot menu UNLESS I hold the CTRL key (or something similar)?

And have the option to "Reboot to Windows" from Ubuntu?

Thanks.

BigglesPiP · 24 Apr 2011 at 01:36

Yes.

Edit your grub configuration to make Ubuntu the default choice and set the time-out to 0. If you hold shift while booting you'll get the menu.

How you set this depends on if you have GRUB 1 or GRUB 2 (or something else altogether like LILO).

Also your BIOS may throw a spanner in the works if you hold shift while it is POSTing where GRUB then won't see you're doing that.

Cheetah Designs · 24 Apr 2011 at 10:46

Nice, i'll give it a go...thanks.

Cheetah Designs · 24 Apr 2011 at 17:20

I can't get it to work.

Whilst researching I came across this: https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer. Now I know you have todo something with the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT but I'm not really sure what?

Also, to get my backlight controls to work on my laptop I had to add this to the boot commands: "acpi-backlight=vendor". What does this actually do?

BigglesPiP · 24 Apr 2011 at 22:32

Cheetah Designs said:
I can't get it to work.

Whilst researching I came across this: https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer. Now I know you have todo something with the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT but I'm not really sure what?

What grub are you using, if it's Grub 2:

Undo any changes.

In /etc/default/grub use "GRUB_TIMEOUT=0". Make sure that "GRUB_DEFAULT=0" assuming ubuntu is at the top of your grub menu. Make sure GRUB_HUIDDEN_TIMEOUT has a "#" in front of it. The hidden timeout does something similar to what you want, but what I'm suggesting is closer to OSX, only you hold shift rather than ctrl.

Once you have done that do:

Code:

sudo update-grub

If it's Grub 1 DO NOT DO THE ABOVE report back and await instruction.

Also, to get my backlight controls to work on my laptop I had to add this to the boot commands: "acpi-backlight=vendor". What does this actually do?

Did that work? If it did; it's telling the Linux Kernel how to handle ACPI with regards to the backlight. If it didn't work you probably need to write something else where it says "vendor".

Cheetah Designs · 25 Apr 2011 at 13:34

BigglesPiP said:
What grub are you using, if it's Grub 2:

Undo any changes.

In /etc/default/grub use "GRUB_TIMEOUT=0". Make sure that "GRUB_DEFAULT=0" assuming ubuntu is at the top of your grub menu. Make sure GRUB_HUIDDEN_TIMEOUT has a "#" in front of it. The hidden timeout does something similar to what you want, but what I'm suggesting is closer to OSX, only you hold shift rather than ctrl.

Once you have done that do:

Code:

sudo update-grub

It's grub2 (Ubuntu 10.10). I tried this and it didn't work. Held right shift, Held left shift, both at the same time....nothing worked just boots straight to Ubuntu.

Did that work? If it did; it's telling the Linux Kernel how to handle ACPI with regards to the backlight. If it didn't work you probably need to write something else where it says "vendor".

Yeah it did work - kinda....just wanted to know what I was doing.

BigglesPiP · 26 Apr 2011 at 01:09

Cheetah Designs said:
It's grub2 (Ubuntu 10.10). I tried this and it didn't work. Held right shift, Held left shift, both at the same time....nothing worked just boots straight to Ubuntu.

Hold shift, but very quickly release and re-press it once a second. I suspect your BIOS might be catching the button and GRUB never seeing it. Or GRUB 2 could just be being unstable as hell.

Cheetah Designs · 26 Apr 2011 at 01:39

BigglesPiP said:
Hold shift, but very quickly release and re-press it once a second. I suspect your BIOS might be catching the button and GRUB never seeing it. Or GRUB 2 could just be being unstable as hell.

Right or left shift?

PermaBanned · 26 Apr 2011 at 02:25

Do they not have exactly the same function?

Cheetah Designs · 26 Apr 2011 at 11:53

Superewza said:
Do they not have exactly the same function?

Same function yes....but a computer can differentiate between them (same with CTRL I believe).

I could be wrong.

EDIT: Tried it and it didn't work...think I will have to settle for this one not working. Could it be that my SSD is booting everything too quickly and Im not getting it in exactly the right place?

BigglesPiP · 27 Apr 2011 at 20:04

OK, remove the hash from "GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT" and set that to 5. Remember to do sudo update-grub after you save the file.

Now it should pause at a blank screen and pressing any button will show the menu.