Ubuntu 12.10 Tries For Last Minute GRUB 2.00

Developers working on Ubuntu 12.10 are now past feature-freeze and the beta has already shipped, but they are hoping to pull in the official release of the GRUB 2.00 boot-loader prior to the October debut of the Quantal Quetzal.

Going back to Ubuntu 9.10, GRUB2 was used as the default boot-loader, albeit a pre-release of the long-awaited GRUB update. In late June of this year, GRUB 2.00 was officially released after many years in development. Meanwhile, in the Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal" repository up to now is GRUB2 v1.99-22ubuntu2 -- one of the earlier development snapshots.

They have had the past two months to try to pull in GRUB 2.00, but now they are getting around to trying to make the switch for 12.10. Canonical's Colin Watson has issued a call for testing of a GRUB 2.00 package on the ubuntu-devel list.

Watson does acknowledge this may be less than ideal, "We're considering upgrading to GRUB 2.00 for Ubuntu 12.10. This change will be slightly later than ideal, so I'd like to get as much testing as possible done first. I've uploaded test packages to a PPA."

So far this Quantal GRUB 2.00 package has been tested on BIOS and UEFI systems along with testing on LVM, LVM+crypto, and RAID-1: things seem to work. However, DM-RAID is currently "problematic", so Colin advises not using it.

For Phoronix enthusiasts that are using Ubuntu and don't mind tinkering with their BIOS, see the mailing list message for the PPA and testing instructions to help Canonical decide whether to slip in GRUB 2.00 for Ubuntu 12.10.