Friendly Tech Ninja Linux how-to's for beginners

Howto: Speed Up GRUB2 Boot Loader on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

If you're like me and are sick on the 10 second GRUB2 boot loader timer and would like to speed it up or remove you'll be happy to know that it's quite easy to change.

Note: This tutorial is for Ubuntu 9.10 if you're using an older version of Ubuntu and thus GRUB see my previous artical - Howto: Speed Up Grub Boot Loader Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Step 1
Open a Terminal window and run:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Step 2
Edit the GRUB_TIMEOUT variable to something like 3 which will give you enough time to access other OS's when needed, but isn't a painful to wait on when booting normal.

If you don't have multiple OS's then feel free to make it 0, if you need to access the GRUB2 menu you just have to be quick to press ESC.

Step 3
After you've changed the variable, save the document, then go to your terminal the run the command:
sudo update-grub

This will generate your new grub.cfg file located in /boot/grub/grub.cfg

If all went well your GRUB2 timeout will be whatever you set it to next time you boot.

If you liked or found this helpful please leave a comment and subscribe.

Related posts:

1. Howto: Speed Up Grub Boot Loader Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
2. Howto: Fix ttf-mscorefonts-installer problems in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
3. Howto: Install Dropbox on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Beta
4. Howto: Fix Alert/System Beep in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
5. Howto: Compile Chromium Browser on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala