Gummiboot: A Simple UEFI Boot Manager

For those looking to experiment with UEFI support on Linux, one of the alternatives to GRUB2 and efilinux is Gummiboot. The Gummiboot UEFI boot manager is an up and coming choice that's under active development for playing with EFI images.

Gummiboot is a FreeDesktop.org project that's mentioned on this Wiki page. "gummiboot is a simple UEFI boot manager which executes configured EFI images. The default entry is selected by a configured pattern (glob) or an on-screen menu. gummiboot operates on the EFI System Partition (ESP) only. Configuration file fragments, kernels, initrds, other EFI images need to reside on the ESP. Linux kernels need to be built with CONFIG_EFI_STUB to be able to be directly executed as an EFI image."

Gummiboot relies upon generic yet simple boot loader configuration files that reside on the EFI System Partition and does support an on-screen menu.

The Git code for this project is found in the FreeDesktop.org CGit place. Gummiboot has seen a number of revisions to it in recent days since its initial import just two weeks ago. A majority of the current Gummibotoo development is handled by Kay Sievers and Harald Hoyer, both of which are Red Hat employees.

That's about it to talk about for now with this brand new open-source boot manager project.