Re: change default os

[Jordan Uggla]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Tom Davies <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi :)
> +1
> to Jordan Uggla's post.  Please ignore Simon's as he seems to be
> complicating the issue.  The move from Grub1 to Grub2 was a big jump and a
> radical change in the way Grub works.  Simon is trying to deal with Grub2 in
> the way that would have been excellent with Grub1 but that doesn't work
> anymore in Grub2.  A LOT of people are still trying to edit the Cfg file but
> it's really not a good idea.  Marc Stewart helped me a lot with Grub2 ...
>
>
> Boot Menu
> To put Windows or pre-existing OS at the top of the boot menu
> (from Launchpad question
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+question/108890
> )
>
> Marc Stewart said on 2010-04-30:
> It's trivial to move Windows to the top of the GRUB2 menu. Open a terminal
> and enter:
>
> cd /etc/grub.d
> sudo mv 30_os-prober 08_os-prober
> sudo update-grub
>
> That'll make GRUB look for non-Linux OSes first, putting Windows at the top.

As I said in my reply to Simon, I highly recommend against using this
method as it is likely to break on upgrades from one release of a
distribution to another (with a smaller chance of breaking on updates
within a distribution major release).

30_os-prober is a script that receives changes with each new version
of grub, for example between grub 1.99 and grub 2.00 it was updated to
(among other things) use submenus. With 30_os-prober being moved, it's
not clear (to me, I'm sure it's defined clearly by Debian policy) what
will happen when the debian package for grub 1.99 is upgraded to grub
2.00 after having renamed 30_os-prober. Will 08_os-prober be updated
with bug fixes and to support submenus? Almost certainly not. Will a
new /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober be added so that you now have other OSs
listed twice in your grub menu? Likely. Will there simply be no
updates to 30_os-prober since it has been detected that it's
user-modified, likely (in which case you'll be using grub 1.99's
30_os-prober with grub 2.00's everything else, and at best that will
mean you'll get submenus for your main GNU/Linux install but not for
the GNU/Linux installs on other partitions). The best case scenario is
that dpkg will complain at you that it doesn't know what to do,
requiring user intervention during the upgrade.

>
>
> The advantage with this is
> 1.  when you update or upgrade Grub2 it still puts Windows at the top of the
> list

True, though the problems with major *upgrades* listed above still apply.

> 2.  however many kernels get installed into your distro Windows stays in the
> same position

Also solved by the new submenus in grub 2.00 (but yes, I understand
some people aren't using grub 2.00 yet).

> 3.  however many kernels are in the list the default selection is still only
> about 1 arrow-key away from the most recent kernel for your distro.

Also solved by submenus.

-- 
Jordan Uggla (Jordan_U on irc.freenode.net)