Edit Ubuntu 16.04 bootloader GRUB

How to Change Grub2 Boot Order in Ubuntu 16.04

Dual-boot or even multi-boot Ubuntu with other operating systems? You may wish to change which OS starts as default in the Grub2 boot-loader.

If you’ve booted into Ubuntu, you can change the boot order via two ways:

• use Grub-Customizer, a graphical tool.
• configure Grub2 manually via a few commands.

Change boot-order via Grub-Customizer:

Grub-Customizer is graphical tool to configure Grub2 / Burg settings. 

To install the software, open terminal, and run the commands below one by one to get it from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

The first command may ask you to type in password. Just type in mind since there’s no visual feedback and hit Enter.

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab grub-customizer_xxx_i386/amd64.deb package(amd64 for 64bit, i386 for 32bit) from link below:

Grub Customizer PPA File Archive

And click install the .deb package via Ubuntu Software.

Set Default OS by Manually configuring Grub:

For those who don’t wish to customize Ubuntu via third-party applications, open terminal from App Launcher or via Ctrl+Alt+T keys and do following steps:

1. First edit the configuration file via command:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Tip: for those who don’t have gksu, install it first via command: sudo apt install gksu.

When it opens, change the line GRUB_DEFAULT=0 to GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and finally save the file.

For Ubuntu Server, use the command below to edit the Grub configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

And save changes by pressing Ctrl+X, typing Y, and finally hitting Enter.

2. Update grub to apply the configuration changes:

sudo update-grub

3. Finally set a default boot OS simply via command:

sudo grub-set-default NUMBER
Start counting boot entries from 0. In the top picture, the Windows Boot Manager is the third entry, so the NUMBER is 2.