QGRUBEditor grows up and becomes KGRUBEditor


Setting up a dual boot system that can run Windows and Linux is relatively painless. Many newer Linux distributions like Ubuntu make it easy by automatically detecting any hard disk partitions with Windows installed and setting up GRUB, a boot manager that lets you choose between operating systems when your computer starts up.

But editing GRUB can be a pain in the behind unless you know what you're doing. If you want to change priorities, so that Windows boots by default, for example, you need to find the menu.lst file, edit it as an administrator, and hope that you haven't messed anything up that will prevent you from logging into either operating system on your next boot.

A few months back we looked at QGRUBEditor, a utility that takes much of the pain out of editing your GRUB settings. QGRUBEditor is available for Ubuntu, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo Linux, and the source is available for anyone who wants to compile it on another operating system. But development on QGRUBEditor has ceased, and a new application called KGRUBEditor has been released.

KGRUBEditor has all the features of QGRUBEditor, but it's built using KDE4 libraries. And it adds a few new features like an easier to use interface, and a color preview window that shows what the GRUB menu will actually look like when you boot your computer.

Because KGRUBEditor is KDE-based, you'll need to install a ton of prerequisites to get the application to work on a system that's not already KDE-based. So if you're buntu of choice is Ubuntu and not Kubuntu, you might want to stick with QGRUBEditor for now.

Tags: grub, kgrubeditor, opensource, qgrubeditor