Archives For November 30, 1999

4 Nifty Grub Themes for Your Linux Boot Menu

Last updated: April 24, 2024

Grub

Boring with the default boot menu in purple? Try installing some themes for this Grub boot-loader.

There’s an open-source project maintains 4 modern design themes for Grub2. They are Vimix, Stylish, Tela, and Slaze.

First take a look at the screenshots:

It’s easy to install the themes as the maintainer offers an installer script. First go to link below and download the source code:

Then do following steps to install the grub themes:

1. Go to Downloads folder, extract the source tarball, and go into source folder.

2. Right click on blank area and select ‘Open in Terminal’

3. When terminal opens, run command to install a theme:

sudo ./install.sh --boot --vimix

For another theme, replace --vimix in command with --stylish, --tela, or --slaze.

You may use more flags, e.g.,

  • --white, install white color icons.
  • --ultrawide, install 2560×1080 background image – not available for slaze theme
  • --2k, install 2k(2560×1440) background image
  • --4k, install 4k(3840×2160) background image

Once installed, restart your machine and enjoy!

(Optional) To remove the Grub theme, re-do the first 2 steps and run command:

sudo ./install.sh --remove --vimix

You may replace --vimix in command with --stylish, --tela, or --slaze to remove one of them.

Boring with the default Grub2 boot loader appearance? Besides switching to Burg boot-loader, you can change the look and feel via the Vimix-grub-theme.

The theme is designed by vinceliuice, the man behind Vimix GTK theme. To try it out, follow the steps below one by one:

1. First, either download the theme package from Github project page, or use the direct link below:

2. Then, go to your Downloads folder. Extract the tarball, and right-click on new generated folder and select “Open in Terminal”.

3. In the pop-up terminal window, run command to install the theme:

sudo ./install.sh --theme vimix

For choice, you can install a few other themes by replacing vimix with tela, stylish, or whitesur. And/or add more options, such as:

  • --screen 2k (or 4k, ultrawide, ultrawide2k) to specify screen resolution. Skip this for 1080p.
  • --icon white (or whitesur) for the icon color. Skip for colorful.

In addition:

For those who want to change the background image or change theme later, simply install Grub-Customizer, launch the software and do:

  1. navigate to Appearance settings tab.
  2. highlight the theme file “background.png”
  3. click ‘Load file’ selection box and choose your image (must be .png)
  4. finally click Save button in Grub Customizer.

Also remove useless Grub menu entries via the first tab in Grub-Customizer if you have multiple Linux Kernels.

Uninstall:

To restore Grub boot menu screen, re-do step 2 to open the theme source folder in terminal, and run command:

sudo ./install.sh --remove vimix

Also replace vimix according which theme you installed.