I fixed the grub (again)

This has nothing to do with food preparation. If only it did.

As mentioned a few days back, I was playing around with a few Linux distros. Most of the well-established ones allow you to install them alongside other operating systems (usually Windows, but could be another Linux distro). One of the ones I tinkered with was Pop!_OS, which is Ubuntu-based, and I forgot it does not do this.

What it does is it declares itself the One True OS and the only way to access anything else is to mash the F8 key when booting up and choosing a boot partition, like some kind of caveman.

I’d had this happen once before (probably the last time I messed around with Pop!_OS) but couldn’t remember the details on how to fix it, so off I went to the interweb. I’m recording the process now for the inevitable time I do this yet again.

First, grub is actually GRUB and is an acronym for GRand Unified Bootloader and the version I’m using is GRUB 2. You can read a little more about it here.

By not supporting grub and doing its own thing, Pop!_OS would just boot automatically, never giving me the usual menu and 10-second (default) time to choose which OS to run after a reboot.

To get my grub working again, I had to repair the grub using these steps:

1. Boot using a Linux Mint live CD (in this case, actually an ISO file living on a USB stick).
2. Open the Terminal and install a program called Boot-Repair.
   • Command: sudo apt install boot-repair
3. Update Boot-Repair, then run it.
4. Important: Choose Advanced Options and make sure I select the right partitions that Mint is on (in this case, it has its own internal SSD) and copy and paste the necessary commands into the Terminal when prompted.
5. Remove the USB stick and reboot.

NOTE: Since I still had a working Mint install, I could have mashed F8, booted into Mint and installed Boot-Repair and run it from my actual copy of the OS, rather than from the USB stick, but I only figured this out later, because my brain likes me doing things the hard way, at least the first time. More here.

It worked and I have my boot menu back. It was even nice enough to keep Pop!_OS listed after it was acting like a punk and trying to take over. The only hiccup is Boot-Repair sees Linux Mint as Ubuntu, as it is an Ubuntu derivative. Unless I actually install Ubuntu itself again, this isn’t an issue, though I can use a graphical grub editor to tweak the name if it really bothers me (it will probably eventually other me).

In the end, it was a hassle, but now I’m both better prepared and (hopefully) smarter about this for the future.

I’m still toying with making my next PC Linux-only, which would mean no need for grub at all. I feel I’m pretty close to that now, as I find working in Mint pleasant and Windows 11 regularly annoys me (to be fair, it has a bunch of stuff I really like, but it’s akin to a plate of yummy food where you have to keep picking out little rocks before you can enjoy it¹Or whatever analogy you prefer. All analogies kind of suck.).