The Minecraft Grub Theme Trio:

Also check out these other projects:

There is also a Spanish translation!

Minegrub

A Grub Theme in the style of Minecraft!

Installation

Using the installation script

Run the interactive installation script as root and at your own risk (It's run as sudo after all)

sudo ./install_theme.sh

• This will help you install the theme, the systemd service and enable the console background (see below)
• It also lets you choose a background if you don't want to randomize it

Manually

Note: grub vs grub2

• If you have a /boot/grub2 folder instead of a /boot/grub folder , you need to adjust the file paths mentioned here and in the minegrub-update.service file
• Also if you're not sure, run grub-mkconfig -V to check if you have grub version 2 (you should have)

• Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/Lxtharia/minegrub-theme.git
cd ./minegrub-theme

• (optional) Choose a background

./choose_background.sh  # or just copy a custom image to minegrub/background.png

• If you want to use the update script, copy an arbitrary number of images you would like to use to minegrub/backgrounds/. You can find some options in background_options/ but you can also use your own images.

• If you do not want to use the update script or if you always want to use the same background, you can use ./choose_background.sh or just copy a custom image to minegrub/background.png

• Copy the folder to your boot partition: (for your interest: -ruv = recursive, update, verbose)

sudo cp -ruv ./minegrub /boot/grub/themes/

• Open /etc/default/grub with your text editor and change/uncomment this line:

GRUB_THEME=/boot/grub/themes/minegrub/theme.txt

• Update your live grub config by running

  sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  

• You're good to go!
• Check out the Configuration section if you want to auto-update the splash text, the background and the packages display after every boot

NixOS module (flake)

# flake.nix
{
  inputs.minegrub-theme.url = "github:Lxtharia/minegrub-theme";
  # ...

  outputs = {nixpkgs, ...} @ inputs: {
    nixosConfigurations.HOSTNAME = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      modules = [
        ./configuration.nix
        inputs.minegrub-theme.nixosModules.default
      ];
    };
  }
}

# configuration.nix
{ pkgs, ... }: {

  boot.loader.grub = {
    minegrub-theme = {
      enable = true;
      splash = "100% Flakes!";
      background = "background_options/1.8  - [Classic Minecraft].png";
      boot-options-count = 4;
    };
    # ...
  };
}

Common Issues

Theme doesn't show

Make sure to check the following lines are set in /etc/defaults/grub:

• Set GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu, so it immediately shows the menu (or else you would need to press ESC first)
• Comment out GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console" (by placing a # in front) because this would disable the graphical terminal.
  • You could also add GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm" to overwrite a possible default value.

The theme is stretched / buttons are too small / too big

Make sure to set the right resolution for your screen in /etc/default/grub like GRUB_GFXMODE=2560x1440,1920x1080,auto. You can see which resolutions your PC supports while pressing c while in the real grub menu and running the videoinfo command.

The font is wrong / too small

Secure boot prevents grub from loading the Minecraft-fonts so it falls back on the grub default font. The easiest solution is to disable secure boot in your BIOS. For the more adventurous, a successful attempt to get both working was documented in this issue.

Configuration

Adjusting for a different amount of boot options:

• If you have more or less than 4 boot options, the buttons will overlap with the bottom bar (the one saying "Options" and "Console")
• To move that bar down and fix this, all you need to do is edit this line in the theme.txt: /boot/grub/themes/minegrub/theme.txt
  • (You can also edit the file in the cloned repository so you don't overwrite it again when you update the theme at some point (via a cp -r))
• The formula and some precalculated values (for 2,3,4,5... boot options) are in the theme.txt, so you should be able to easily change it to the correct value.

Changing splash text, background and the "x Packages Installed" text!

The update_theme.py script can make the theme more dynamic: It...

• Chooses a random line from assets/splashes.txt (and then generates and replaces the logo.png which holds the splash text)
  • To add new splash texts simply edit ./minegrub/assets/splashes.txt and add them to the file.
• Update the amount of packages currently installed.
• Randomly chooses a file from backgrounds/ (ignoring hidden files beginning with a dot) as the background image.
  • Put all backgrounds you want to randomly choose from in ./minegrub/backgrounds/. Hidden files (i.e. filenames beginning with a dot) will be ignored. You can also add your own images.
  • Version-prefixed backgrounds also select the matching button style automatically: 1.15 and newer use a white outline with white text, while older or non-versioned backgrounds use the classic blue highlight and yellow text.
• If you want to get a specific splash and/or background for the next boot, run python update_theme.py [BACKGROUND_FILE [SPLASH]] (e.g. python update_theme.py 'backgrounds/1.15 - [Buzzy Bees].png' 'Splashing!')
  • Empty string parameters will be replaced by a random choice, e.g. python update_theme.py '' 'Splashing!' for a random background and the splash Splashing!.

Dependencies:

• Make sure fastfetch or neofetch is installed
• Make sure Python 3 (or an equivalent) and the Pillow python package are installed
  • Install Pillow either with the python-pillow package from the AUR or with sudo -H pip3 install pillow
  • It's important to use sudo -H, because it needs to be available for the root user

Automatically update splash and "Packages Installed"...

...directly

• Just run python /boot/grub/themes/minegrub/update_theme.py (from anywhere) after boot using whatever method works for you

...with init-d (SysVinit)

• Just copy the ./minegrub-SysVinit.sh under /etc/init.d as minecraft-grub then run update-rc.d minecraft-grub defaults as root privileges:

sudo cp -v "./minegrub-SysVinit.sh" "/etc/init.d/minecraft-grub"
sudo chmod u+x "/etc/init.d/minecraft-grub" # Just to be sure the permissions are set correctly.
sudo update-rc.d minecraft-grub defaults

...with systemd

• Edit ./minegrub-update.service to use /boot/grub2/ on line 5 if applicable
• Copy ./minegrub-update.service to /etc/systemd/system
• Enable the service: systemctl enable minegrub-update.service
• If it's not updating after rebooting (it won't update on the first reboot because it updates after you boot into your system), check systemctl status minegrub-update.service for any errors (for example if pillow isn't installed in the correct scope)

Setting the console background

When in grub, pressing 'c' opens the grub console. A background you can be specified with GRUB_BACKGROUND=<path> in /etc/defaults/grubthough this doesn't work if a theme is set

For this, you need to patch a line in a specific grub file. The installation script will do this for you, or you can use this pretty looking sed command:

# Create a backup of the file first
cp /etc/grub.d/00_header ./00_header.bak
# replace the elif in that line with an fi; if
sed --in-place -E 's/(.*)elif(.*"x\$GRUB_BACKGROUND" != x ] && [ -f "\$GRUB_BACKGROUND" ].*)/\1fi; if\2/' /etc/grub.d/00_header

Now you can set

GRUB_BACKGROUND="/boot/grub/themes/minegrub/dirt.png"

And don't forget to regenerate the grub.cfg :)

Notes:

• i use arch btw
• please don't sue me mojang, i've made zero dollars on this
• if you work at mojang and use this theme there, send me some proof lmao, that would be much more worth than dollars

Thanks to

• https://github.com/toboot for giving me this wonderful idea!
• the internet for giving me wisdom lmao (Mainly http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/Grub2_theme_tutorial)
• The contributors for contributing and giving me some motivation to improve some little things here and there
• Vanilla Tweaks for some of the backgrounds

Font downloaded from https://www.fontspace.com/minecraft-font-f28180 and used for non-commercial use.