Refind boot manager configuration software#

Refind boot manager configuration software#

Both EFI and BIOS are low-level software that acts as an interface between the operating system and the firmware on the motherboard. If you have a laptop or desktop that was manufactured in the last 10 years, then it uses EFI instead of BIOS. REFInd is a boot manager for computers that use EFI/UEFI ( Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). The Linux kernel will then load itself into memory and execute, instead of depending on an external boot loader like GRUB. All we need is a boot manager to hand off control to the Linux kernel that we want to boot. We donвЂ™t need the GRUB boot loader on EFI-based systems, since an EFI-boot loader stub is built into the Linux kernel itself. GRUB is both a boot loader and a boot manager. A boot manager hands off control to another boot program. Basics Boot loaders and Boot managersДЄ boot loader loads an OS kernel into memory and executes it. If you already have a computer with multiple Linux distributions installed in EFI-mode, then you can skip to the section for installing Refind. This article describes how we can create a multi-boot system using EFI boot, and use Refind to switch between systems. If you have a desktop or laptop that was manufactured in the last 10 years, then it comes with EFI, and there is absolutely no reason to be using GRUB. GRUB is the default on all major Linux distributions in order to keep compatibility with older computers that donвЂ™t have EFI. Many years later, IвЂ™m often surprised by how few people are aware of it, and how many people still struggle with GRUB for booting their Linux systems.

I came across rEFInd five years ago, and it was one of those things that solved a lot of headaches for me. If you use GRUB for booting multiple distributions and have never heard of rEFInd then this article is for you. This article is for people who dual-boot Linux with Windows, or boot multiple Linux distributions.