I've been creating a multi boot system on a laptop for a technophobic, schizophrenic friend on medication. Due to this, everything needs to be as simple as possible.

The laptop now has three operating systems installed. These are KDE Neon, Elementary OS, and Windows 10. The laptop came with Windows 10 and I couldn't decide for my friend just to delete Windows 10. I chose KDE Neon and Elementary OS as being probably the two Linux distros which are the easiest to use.

First of all, I installed KDE Neon, followed by Elementary OS. After the installation, I found out that when booting up, GRUB lists the three operating systems in the following order...

1. Elementary OS
2. Windows 10
3. KDE Neon

The way things have gone since the installation, I've been setting up a lot of things in KDE Neon, after finding out that the headphones aren't working under Elementary OS at all. Even under KDE Neon, the Bluetooth headphones only work when plugged in with an audio cable.

As my friend needs everything to work as simply as possible, how can I edit GRUB to make KDE Neon the default OS?

Depending on how old the computer is, it might be a simple as going into the bios and selecting the Neon drive to be the first drive in the uefi or boot section (if it is a somewhat recent machine)

Each OS has its own bootloader on more modern machines, and as Elementary was the last OS installed, it set itself to be the primary booting OS, and you are using Elementary's grub menu.
If you can set Neon to be the primary you should be all set, as Neon's grub menu will have Neon as the first choice, though if you want to be able to also boot Elementary, you probably will need to update grub once you have booted into Neon using Neon's grub menu as it may not know about Elementary just yet.

if you have an older machine using the older MBR setup, it will be a bit more involved.

claydoh wrote:Depending on how old the computer is, it might be a simple as going into the bios and selecting the Neon drive to be the first drive in the uefi or boot section (if it is a somewhat recent machine)

Each OS has its own bootloader on more modern machines, and as Elementary was the last OS installed, it set itself to be the primary booting OS, and you are using Elementary's grub menu.
If you can set Neon to be the primary you should be all set, as Neon's grub menu will have Neon as the first choice, though if you want to be able to also boot Elementary, you probably will need to update grub once you have booted into Neon using Neon's grub menu as it may not know about Elementary just yet.

if you have an older machine using the older MBR setup, it will be a bit more involved.

I'm afraid that doesn't work! I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro C50. The BIOS is an Amibios from 2012. It has UEFI, but has been set to CSM. It only lists the whole hard drive, not any partitions on it.

paulbr wrote:
I'm afraid that doesn't work! I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro C50. The BIOS is an Amibios from 2012. It has UEFI, but has been set to CSM. It only lists the whole hard drive, not any partitions on it.

Ok, not a problem, but will take more steps. On your system, there will be only one bootloader, which is from Elementary as this was the last OS installed.
If you prefer Neon, and perhaps plan to remove Elementary, then you can reinstall neon's Grub and its menu by booting to your Neon install disk and follow this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Recov ... rminal_way

Now, if you plan to keep Elementary, you can use a graphical tool to modify the menu order using Grub Customizer
http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/03/11/inst ... 18-04-lts/
You install and run this from within Elementary.

claydoh wrote:

paulbr wrote:
I'm afraid that doesn't work! I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro C50. The BIOS is an Amibios from 2012. It has UEFI, but has been set to CSM. It only lists the whole hard drive, not any partitions on it.

Ok, not a problem, but will take more steps. On your system, there will be only one bootloader, which is from Elementary as this was the last OS installed.
If you prefer Neon, and perhaps plan to remove Elementary, then you can reinstall neon's Grub and its menu by booting to your Neon install disk and follow this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Recov ... rminal_way

Now, if you plan to keep Elementary, you can use a graphical tool to modify the menu order using Grub Customizer
http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/03/11/inst ... 18-04-lts/
You install and run this from within Elementary.[/quote

OK, I'll try Grub Customiser. The good news is that the headphones are now working with an audio cable under Elementary OS. Just one thing puzzles me, though. If this software allows me so much control in editing the Grub menu, then why do I need to run it from within Elementary OS?

paulbr wrote:

claydoh wrote:

paulbr wrote:
I'm afraid that doesn't work! I'm using a Toshiba Satellite Pro C50. The BIOS is an Amibios from 2012. It has UEFI, but has been set to CSM. It only lists the whole hard drive, not any partitions on it.

Ok, not a problem, but will take more steps. On your system, there will be only one bootloader, which is from Elementary as this was the last OS installed.
If you prefer Neon, and perhaps plan to remove Elementary, then you can reinstall neon's Grub and its menu by booting to your Neon install disk and follow this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Recov ... rminal_way

Now, if you plan to keep Elementary, you can use a graphical tool to modify the menu order using Grub Customizer
http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/03/11/inst ... 18-04-lts/
You install and run this from within Elementary.[/quote

OK, I'll try Grub Customiser. The good news is that the headphones are now working with an audio cable under Elementary OS. Just one thing puzzles me, though. If this software allows me so much control in editing the Grub menu, then why do I need to run it from within Elementary OS?

Because elementary is the OS that controls Grub, as it was the last OS installed, and it replaced Neon's Grub.
The 'harder' method replaces Elementary's with Neon's.
In the end, if you keep both OSs, then it does not matter.

I'm afraid it looks like something hasn't been installed beforehand or has been disabled in Elementary compared with other Debian based distros.

Here's what happened...

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

sudo: add-apt-repository: command not found


What do I need to do first?

Not sure, you may need to install software-properties-common but you may want to check out what Elementary users know about adding PPAs to make sure.

claydoh wrote:Not sure, you may need to install software-properties-common but you may want to check out what Elementary users know about adding PPAs to make sure.

It turns out that Elementary OS has an app for this called "Software & Updates". The user has to type the repository name into a box, but this has to be in a URL type format, although at the beginning you have to type deb followed by a space, then at the end you have to type another space followed by some kind of comment, such as (without quotes) "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main". I had to find a URL where GRUB Customizer was stored, which was http://ppa.launchpad.net/danielrichter2 ... zer/ubuntu , but I added deb and a space in front, as well as something like a space followed by "grub customizer" before it would let me add it!

After the above, I typed a few terminal commands which didn't always work. Here's what started things going...

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package grub-customizer
davidf@davidf-SATELLITE-PRO-C50-A-1KJ:~/Downloads$ sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package grub-customizer
davidf@davidf-SATELLITE-PRO-C50-A-1KJ:~/Downloads$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
 This PPA contains the latest release of Grub Customizer.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~danielrichter2007/+archive/ubuntu/grub-customizer
Press [ENTER] to continue or Ctrl-c to cancel adding it.


After this, I had GRUB Customizer installed. I ran it from the Applications Menu, and it looks quite simple. Unfortunately, I haven't yet saved a new configuration because I'm worried my GRUB Menu may be disabled, then my system would be unbootable! What could I do in that case? I've got some software called "Super GRUB disc" on DVD, but this system is refusing to boot from DVD, because of ACPI errors, which is another subject I need to post about.

Good news! I actuall decided to risk it and found that GRUB Customizer works well. The GRUB menu now looks and works exactly as I want it, even showing larger text and with a sci fi themed background pic! Now to try and deal with all the ACPI errors that prevent this laptop booting from DVD.