BURG fan? Put your talents to work and help create this theme

Bored? Nothing better to do? Why not help out Manu Järvinen who mailed us a plea for help on turning his rather swish BURG theme idea into a boot loading beauty.

“I am a designer who does not like to code. But what I do like is to design. So I designed some graphics for a BURG bootloader theme. And now I need help from someone to make it real. And, since I am a designer, I don't like to write either. So as I want to learn Gimp, I made a couple of slides to tell everyone what I need.”

We’re always keen to help out - particularly when something as sexy as this is at stake - so follow the prompts below to get clued up, get the tools and get started!

Download the BURG theme graphics here.

“In the package there is also Gimp file of the icons. All you designers can do anything you want with them. Maybe even design another BURG bootloader theme, who knows.”

For reference here's the theme on it's own. “This is how it should look like when you boot up your computer:” says Manu, continuing “if more than one person wants to tackle this offer, I encourage [you] all to collaborate together in order to achieve the best possible result (especially for making that rounded loading bar possible! :)”Manu finishes of his mail to us with this little beau: 

“And here's a mockup of what I would love to see the BURG becoming in the future. [note: yes, they are very little compressed jpgs (high quality, high filesize, not-so-web-comfortable), but please keep them that way. Otherwise the gradient color banding would be too visible - especially on a laptop screen - which would look UG-LY]”

Over to you guys!

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Fortune BURG theme adds Faenza style to boot time (Updated)

Fans of the great looking graphical GRUB boot loader replacement ‘BURG’ will no doubt be pleased to see yet another sterling theme is now available to use, install and gush over at every single boot.

Called ‘Fortune’ the theme is striking in design with its woody textured background and use of the superb Faenza icon set.
Not every OS or distro rocks out with a tile-y style ‘faenza’ icon however. In such cases Fortune defaults to the native BURG icons where needed but the creator is looking to remedy this ASAP.

Current distro’s & OSes that have slick icons are: -

• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• Debian
• OpenSUSE
• Mandriva
• Linux MINT
• Gentoo
• PCLinuxOS
• Sabayon
• Slackware

And, no groaning at the back,

• Windows
• Apple

The theme is the work of ‘OrphanShadow’ over on Gnome-look, where it can also be downloaded.

Like it? Love it? Leave your critiques, suggestions or optional adoration in the comment space below (After these shameless plugs, natch)

• New to BURG? It can be installed easily using the BURG Manager application or via a PPA.
• Already using BURG? Here are 5 keys you should hit during boot for extra awesome.

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BURG Boot loader installation, themeing & more gets even easier with BURG Manager app

If you’re read this blog for a few months you can’t have missed mention of BURG - the easy way to get a graphical, good-looking bootloader.

The relatively easy process of installing BURG has now been made even easy thanks to Ingalex and his ‘BURG Manager’ application - which lets you to do all of the following from one simple interface: -

• Install Burg, Burg-themes and a Burg emulator
• Set timeout
• Change theme
• Set the screen resolution
• Browse & install new BURG themes
• Remove Burg
• Restore Grub2
• Set the default operating system

Download

Easy one-click install .deb files can be found over on the projects home page @ this link.

Alternatively you can add the official repository for the application, thus ensuring you remain up-to-date with the latest fixes and features. To do this open a terminal and enter the following commands carefully and as root where needed.

• echo "deb http://www.sourceslist.eu/repo/ubuntu lucid main non-free" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
• wget http://www.sourceslist.eu/?download=public.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install burg-manager

Once installed you will find the BURG Manager in the Application > System menu

Finally…

To finish off here is a pretty swish video of the application in action from the developers themselves: -

BURG Manager in action

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Daily 5: 5 keys to press during burg boot

Everyone loves button pushing and beautiful boot loader BURG gives you a copious selection to choose from. Better yet they’re useful!

Here’s our dandy high-5 list of five buttons to press during your BURG boot.

Press R for Resolution options

BURG looking all stretched and garbled? Press the R key to select a better resolution. Highlight the resolution you want to switch to in the menu and hit the enter key to apply. Your screen may reset of flicker for a second or two whilst it readjusts so lay off the panic.

Press T to choose a different theme

Bored of the default theme? Hit up the ‘T’ key for a whole world of extra themes. You can see most of them over in our original BURG install post @ this link.

Press F to hide the Ubuntu entries you never use

An easy way to hide all of those extra kernel, memtest & other entries that you never select is to select then and hit ‘F’. This ‘folds’ them away out of sight. To see them press ‘F’ again. Toggle-tastic!

Press E to edit the command of a boot item

If you need to tweak around with the boot command for an item, such as removing quiet-splash for various bork-ish reasons, then the ‘E’ key is your friend, allowing you to edit the selected item in your BURG menu.

Press Q to view the old GRUB menu

Bored of fancy pants? Need something more sober for a second? Hit ‘Q’ to view the old-style GRUB menu list.

You can see a more comprehensive list of button commands over on the BURG wiki @ http://code.google.com/p/burg/wiki/InstallUbuntu

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Dark Shine BURG Theme adds transpicuous vibrancy to your boot screen

Add some ambiance (no, not that one) to your BURG boot-loader with SWOrginal's Dark Shine Burg theme - a vibrant hyaline-like theme reminiscent of speeding city lights at night.

Download file and easy-install script in the link below.

It should go without saying that you do need to have BURG installed for this theme to work For painless BURG installation instructions see here.

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Get Animated, Themed, Icon Only GRUB Menu Using BURG - now simple to use!

This is an updated version of our original BURG article which was published earlier this year. Since that time BURG has progressed immeasurably. If the complex installation and configuration steps put you off previously you may wish to glance over the new refined installation steps.

We all know that the GRUB loading menu that greets many of upon boot isn't the most stylish or modern looking interface - even adding a poorly pixelated picture background can't save it from looking lame.
 
Well, getting a gorgeous, animated and informative boot-loader is no longer a dream thanks to 'Brand New Universal Bootloader' (more commonly referred to as 'BURG'.)

Admittedly, "BURG" may sound like something from the depths of Star Trek mythology but the letters actually stand for "Brand-new Universal loadeR from GRUB" and is based on the GRUB bootloader. A bevvy of cool features and enhancements make it an option well worth considering if you like to beautify your system. Here's a video of BURG in action: -

Install BURG

Here sits my warning - don't try this unless you're really sure you want to. Whilst there shouldn't be any frakk-ups this is a delicate area of your system and things will go awry without attention or intention!

Add the BURG PPA:-

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bean123ch/burg
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install burg burg-themes

Install BURG to your Master Boot Record

Install burg to your MBR using the command below. Substitute ‘hd0’ with an alternative drive if needed.

• sudo burg-install "(hd0)"

Update BURG entries

You MUST run this step or you may be left scratching your head upon reboot when nothing shows up

• sudo update-burg

Theming

Now for the juicy stuff; the reason you’re probably installing burg - themes!

Selecting a burg theme is simple; reboot and when you see the default BURG screen press the 't' button on your keyboard. A long list of themes will present itself to you, you need only to use your arrow keys to select one and then hit enter for it to be applied.

Here are a selection of some of the more popular themes: -

Sora

Radiance

Coffee

Winter

Ubuntu

Proto

 

Previewing Your GRUB Menu
You can preview your GRUB theme without rebooting providing you have first done all of the above steps

 

After installation run the command: -

• burg-emu

A new window will open displaying your GRUB menu. To close it press the 'c' button on your keyboard and type 'exit'.

 

Official BURG website can be found @ http://code.google.com/p/burg

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BURG Gets Update, Updated Instructions

The GRUB menu animating/themeing application 'BURG' received a PPA update today resulting in some changes to how you install themes.

If you have yet to install BURG then you can skip this article and follow our original - now revised - tutorial @ this link here.

If you already have BURG installed and get 'theme not found' errors you will need to do the following: -

• Open a terminal
• sudo apt-get remove grub-pc
• sudo apt-get install grub-pc
• Re-download your theme from the list here and save it to your Home folder
• cd /boot/grub
• sudo unzip ~/theme_name.zip

You may also want to try out the new 'GRUB emulation' mode which lets you preview your themes.

• sudo apt-get install grub-emu
• sync ; sudo grub-emu

You can exit the previw window by pressing 'c' and typing 'exit'.

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