Grub is a Linux boot manager that is used to switch between two or more operating systems installed on your machines. By default, Grub's background is plain black with white text. In this article, we will change Grub's default background to any image of your choice.
1 Create the background image
Using your favorite image editing software, create a logo or an image that will look good even with very few colors. Save your image as a PNG with only 14 colors and resize it to 640x480 pixels.
2 Convert the PNG to XPM
If you use GimpShop or The GIMP, you can directly save your image as XPM. But for Photoshop users, you'll have to use ImageMagick's convert utility to convert your image to the format that GRUB uses (make sure the you have ImageMagick installed). To start converting, open your terminal and issue the following command:
$ convert splash.png -resize 640x480 -colors 14 splash.xpm
3 Compress the image file
Now that we have our image ready, we will need to compress it to make it suitable for GRUB and copy it to GRUB's directory.
$ gzip splash.xpm
$ su -
(Type your root password)
# cp splash.xpm.gz /boot/grub/
4 Configure GRUB to use the new image
All we need to do now is to configure GRUB to use the image that we created. To edit GRUB's configuration, issue the command:
$ vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
Add the following line at the beginning of the configuration file (if it doesn't exists):
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
Change (hd0,0) to the partition where GRUB resides then save the changes you've made and restart your machine. GRUB should use your image now.
1 Create the background image
Using your favorite image editing software, create a logo or an image that will look good even with very few colors. Save your image as a PNG with only 14 colors and resize it to 640x480 pixels.
2 Convert the PNG to XPM
If you use GimpShop or The GIMP, you can directly save your image as XPM. But for Photoshop users, you'll have to use ImageMagick's convert utility to convert your image to the format that GRUB uses (make sure the you have ImageMagick installed). To start converting, open your terminal and issue the following command:
$ convert splash.png -resize 640x480 -colors 14 splash.xpm
3 Compress the image file
Now that we have our image ready, we will need to compress it to make it suitable for GRUB and copy it to GRUB's directory.
$ gzip splash.xpm
$ su -
(Type your root password)
# cp splash.xpm.gz /boot/grub/
4 Configure GRUB to use the new image
All we need to do now is to configure GRUB to use the image that we created. To edit GRUB's configuration, issue the command:
$ vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
Add the following line at the beginning of the configuration file (if it doesn't exists):
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
Change (hd0,0) to the partition where GRUB resides then save the changes you've made and restart your machine. GRUB should use your image now.
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