How to customize the GRUB 2 in Ubuntu

GRUB 2 is the next generation of GNU GRUB. All recent versions of ubuntu come with GRUB 2. GRUB 2 cleaner, safer, more robust, more portable and more powerful.

If you're already familiar with older  GRUB,   GRUB 2 configuration file is similar in broad sense, but it varies in many finer  details. Some times it can be a bit tricky too.

  The main  config file is   /etc/default/grub .  Open it using


   $ sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
  
you will  see  some thing  very similar to the following  ....

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=7
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

 

 

Some of the important configuration options you can try changing are  

Change default Timeout:
To change the default timeout option in GRUB 2, you just need to change the GRUB_TIMEOUT parameter. The value of this parameter is in sec, change this value as per your requirement.

Change the default boot option:
To change the default boot option in GRUB 2, you just need to change the GRUB_DEFAULT parameter. 0 is the first entry, so if you want Windows to be your default boot option which is, say at, 5th position in the grub menu, then you just need to change the GRUB_DEFAULT value to 4 and save the file and close it. Save the file after making all the required changes and from the terminal run the following command

sudo update-grub