If you want to try out a new Linux distro, be it the latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal daily ISO or any other (I've only tested it with Ubuntu though!) and don't want to burn a CD each time you want to try a new daily build (and you don't have an USB memory stick around), you can use a cool GRUB 2 feature that lets you boot a live CD ISO directly from your hard disk. You can also use this method to boot varous utilities such as Super Grub Disk, SystemRescueCD, Parted Magic and so on.

Grub Customizer - a new graphical GRUB 2 and BURG settings manager -, 2.0 has been released today with a lot of enhancements: you can now select the default boot entry, change the menu visibility and timeout, set kernel parameters, disable recovery entries and change screen resolution (GFX_MODE) - all by using Grub Customizer.

A few days ago I was telling you about rebooting in Windows from Linux with GRUB 2 (or any other OS for that matter) by running a command which simply selects (highlights) a different entry in the GRUB menu for your next restart only.

Here is how to permanently change the selected boot entry in GRUB2 (so when the GRUB menu is displayed, the first menu entry won't be selected anymore and instead, you'll be able to make GRUB automatically select a different entry, be it Windows, a Linux distribution or whatever).

This could be used for automatically selecting a custom Linux Kernel, Linux distribution or some other OS in GRUB, without having to modify the actualy GRUB menu order (which has become a bit more complicated with GRUB 2).

You can already create an ISO with multiple Linux distributions using MultiCD but if you want to use GRUB 2 on your USB memory stick, rrw has a really nice how-to for doing this.


Using his how-to, you can of course boot multiple ISO files like with MultiCD. Read all about it HERE.

Remember the Ubuntu Karmic Koala goal, to boot in 10 seconds? In an Arstechnica post, we are presented with a boot chart from Canonical external developer relations coordinator Jorge Castro which is simply astonishing: the computer start up in just 5 seconds, with Xorg coming up in just 2 seconds, while for normal computers, this is done in 20-25 seconds.

Even though this is done by using an SSD (solid state drive), it's nonetheless a great achievement. Read the whole ArsTechnica article, HERE.

You may also want to read about creating your own boot chart.