AN ALTERNATIVE BOOT MANAGER

GRUB is a perfectly acceptable boot manager for most people, but if you’re looking for something more visually appealing (or you’ve installed Elementary on a Mac), then you should look to replace it with the rEFInd Boot Manager. Note that rEFInd only works on computers that use a UEFI rather than a BIOS—this should cover most modern PCs (and Macs from 2006 onward).

Once Elementary has been installed, open the Terminal, and enter the following commands to install rEFInd (you should skip the first command if you’ve previously installed software-properties-common): $ sudo apt-get install softwareproperties-common && sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:rodsmith/refind $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install refind

Once installed, answer “Yes” at the screen that appears, then wait for rEFInd to finish installing itself. Reboot your PC, and you should find GRUB has been replaced with a friendlier, more visually appealing alternative—use the mouse or keyboard to move between options, and note that rEFInd automatically selects the last-used operating system as the default choice the next time you reboot your PC.

You can also install rEFInd without adding the repository: Open the Epiphany web browser from the Dock, and go to

www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html, where you should click the “binary zip file” link to save the refind-bin-0.10.5.zip file.

Once complete, click the file to open the “Downloads” folder. Right-click the zip file, and choose “Extract Here.” Open the newly created “refind-bin” folder, then right-click inside the “Files” window, and choose “Open With > Terminal.” Finally, type the following command:

$ ./refind-install

Enter your account password when prompted, and a series of messages should appear confirming that rEFInd is the default boot manager.