How to Install Grub Customizer on Debian 10

Grub Customizer is a great GUI tool for changing the default configurations of the grub bootloader. With this tool you can add, remove and rearrange boot menu entries via the GUI. It also allows you to edit kernel parameters to change the time delay at boot time. The Grub Customizer tool also allows you to customize the grub menu, e.g. change the fonts and background image.

Grub Customizer is available in some Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, where it can be installed with its PPA. However, the Grub Customizer PPA is missing in the official repositories of Debian OS. Therefore we have to download it from external sources. In this article we will explain how to download and install the Grub Customizer in your Debian OS.

We have run the commands and procedures mentioned in this article on a Debian 10 operating system.

Installing Grub Customizer

Follow the below steps to install Grub Customizer:

Open the Terminal in your Debian OS by going in to the Activities tab on the left corner of your desktop. Then in the search bar, type terminal. when the icon appears, click on it to open.

Step 1: Install prerequisites

Initially, we will need to meet prerequisites before moving towards the installation process.

To do so, run the below command in Terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libgtkmm-3.0-dev libssl-dev gettext libarchive-dev

Step 2: Download Grub Customizer

Now in order to download Grub Customizer, run the following command in Terminal:

$ wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+sourcefiles/grub-customizer/5.1.0-1/grub-customizer_5.1.0.orig.tar.gz

To check for the latest version of Grub Customizer, use the following link:

https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+download

The file will be downloaded in your Terminal’s current directory.

Step 3: Unzip the downloaded file

Now we will need to unzip the downloaded grub customizer file. For that run the following command in terminal:

$ tar xzf grub-customizer_5.1.0.org.tar.gz

Step 4: Compiling sources

Now navigate to the extracted folder using the cd command as follows:

$ cd grub-customizer-5.1.0/

And then run the following command in Terminal:

$ cmake . && make -j8

Step 5: Install Grub Customizer

Now we are prepared for installing Grub Customizer. Run the following command in Terminal to install Grub Customizer.

$ sudo make install

Step 6: Launch Grub Customizer

You can launch Grub Customizer right from your Terminal. For that, simply type the following command in Terminal:

$ grub-customizer

Alternatively, it Grub Customizer can also be launch through the application’s menu.for that hit the super key on your keyboard. this will open the search bar where you can search for the grub Customizer.

Once opened, you will see the following default view of Grub Customizer.

Uninstall Grub Customizer

In case you want to uninstall Grub Customizer, you can do so by running the following the below steps:

Navigate to the folder containing the Grub Customizer using the cd command. then run the following command to uninstall Grub Customizer:

$ cd grub-customizer-5.1.0/

$ sudo make uninstall

That is all you need in order to install Grub Customizer in your Debian OS. it is a simple but great tool for changing the default bootloader settings as well as making other modifications.