These are the GRUB boot splashscreens I made. Personally I like them of course. Maybe you like them as well?

Most Debian-related themes are blueish (like e.g. 'moreblue-orbit'). I think blue is a very nice colour, but the combination of red, black and white in the Debian logo is also very nice. And because you don't see very much of that, I decided to use those colours for my splashscreens.

The logo used comes straight from the Debian website and is licensed! Please see the license notice¹⁾ and the section Debian Open Use Logo License on the Debian logos site about that.

More splashscreens and other (better than mine I guess) artwork like wallpapers etc. can be found at debianart.org.

GRUB 2 has been around for a while and from version 6.0 (Squeeze) on this is the default bootloader in Debian GNU/Linux. So I made a new splashscreen for GRUB 2. The installation is quite easy. Make sure to follow these steps as root!

• Download the file Desktux-boot.tga to your computer.

• Put the file in a directory where GRUB can find it; e.g. in /boot/grub.

• Edit the file /etc/default/grub, find the line that contains GRUB_GFXMODE and edit it with a resolution your videocard and monitor support. For example:

  GRUB_GFXMODE=1680x1050

  Maybe you'll have to unncomment that line. If there's a line like GRUB_TERMINAL=console make sure to comment it!
  To find out which modes are supported by your card hit <c> in the GRUB menu and type vbeinfo.²⁾
  Add the following line for your custom background image (just add it anywhere, e.g. beneath the GRUB_GFXMODE row):

  GRUB_BACKGROUND=/boot/grub/Desktux-boot.tga

  In this context (but unnecessary for the splashscreen to work) this parameter can be handy. Just add the line (if wanted) and GRUB will try to keep the mode for booting Linux:

  GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

• That's it already if you just want to set your own wallpaper. But I also want to change the menu colours so it matches the colours in my wallpaper. So edit the file /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme and find this line (it's pretty much at the end of the file):

  set_background_image "${GRUB_BACKGROUND}" || set_default_theme

  Edit it to match the following line.³⁾ Defining “COLOR_NORMAL” and “COLOR_HIGHLIGHT” in /etc/default/grub has no effect as these variables get overwritten.

  set_background_image "${GRUB_BACKGROUND}" "white/black" "light-red/black" || set_default_theme

• Last but not least update the grub.cfg:

  update-grub

All done, enjoy!

GRUB Legacy is version 1 of the GRUB bootloader and no longer supported! By the way: if you wonder why the BSD daemon is next to Tux, FreeBSD is just another OS on my computer.

Just download the file boot.xpm.gz and place it in the directory /boot/grub/ (as root of course). Next, edit the GRUB configuration file (in Debian this is /boot/grub/menu.lst). Make sure the default colors from GRUB are either deleted or commented:

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

Next, add these lines just after the one you just deleted or commented:

# Nice logo
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/boot.xpm.gz
foreground=000080
background=efb90e

Of course hd(0,0) is the first partition on the first HDD. You must change this if the directory /boot/grub is on a different partition on your system.

Enjoy!