Software:rEFInd

From HandWiki
Short description: Boot manager for UEFI systems

rEFInd
REFInd boot selection screenshot.png
rEFInd with minimalist theme showing boot selection of Windows 10 and Ubuntu
Developer(s)Roderick W. Smith
Initial release14 March 2012 (2012-03-14)
Written inC
Operating systemLinux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, TrueOS
PlatformIA-32, x86-64, AArch64
Size~ 4 MiB
Available inEnglish
TypeUEFI boot manager
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later,
BSD-3-Clause (original program), additional components released under various licenses
Websitewww.rodsbooks.com/refind

rEFInd is a boot manager for UEFI and EFI-based machines.[1][2] It can be used to boot multiple operating systems that are installed on a single non-volatile device. It also provides a way to launch UEFI applications.[3][4]

It was forked from discontinued rEFIt in 2012, with 0.2.0 as its first release.[5][6]

rEFind supports IA-32, x86-64, and AArch64 architecture.

Features

rEFInd has several features:[7]

  • Automatic operating systems detection.
  • Customisable OS launch options.
  • Graphical or text mode. Theme is customisable.[8]
  • Mac-specific features, including spoofing booting process to enable secondary video chipsets on some Mac.
  • Linux-specific features, including autodetecting EFI stub loader to boot Linux kernel directly and using fstab in lieu of rEFInd configuration file for boot order.
  • Support for Secure Boot.

Adoption

rEFInd is the default Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot manager for TrueOS.

rEFInd is included in official repositories of major Linux distributions.[9][10][11][12]

Development

GNU-EFI and TianoCore are supported as main development platforms for writing binary UEFI applications in C to launch right from the rEFInd GUI menu. Typical purposes of an EFI application are fixing boot problems and programmatically modifying settings within UEFI environment, which would otherwise be performed from within the BIOS of a personal computer (PC) without UEFI.[7]

rEFInd can be built with either GNU-EFI or TianoCore EDK2/UDK.[13]

Fork

RefindPlus is a fork of rEFInd that add several features and improvements for Mac devices, specifically MacPro3,1 and MacPro5,1, and equivalent Xserve.[14]

See also

References

  1. "Linux Multi-boot with Refind" (in en-US). https://teejeetech.com/2020/09/05/linux-multi-boot-with-refind/. 
  2. Axelsson, Mats Tage. "Refind Boot Manager" (in en-US). https://linuxhint.com/refind_boot_manager/. 
  3. Watson, J.A (29 January 2013). "The rEFInd boot loader for UEFI Systems: A life (and sanity) saver". http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-refind-boot-loader-for-uefi-systems-a-life-and-sanity-saver/#!. 
  4. "rEFInd - ArchWiki". https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/REFInd. 
  5. "The rEFInd Boot Manager: Revisions". https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/revisions.html. 
  6. "rEFIt - An EFI Boot Menu and Toolkit". http://refit.sourceforge.net/. 
  7. 7.0 7.1 "The rEFInd Boot Manager: rEFInd Features". https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/features.html. 
  8. "The rEFInd Boot Manager: Theming rEFInd". https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/themes.html. 
  9. "Arch Linux - refind 0.13.2-1 (any)". https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/refind/. 
  10. "Debian -- Details of package refind in bullseye". https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/refind. 
  11. "Ubuntu – Package Download Selection -- refind_0.12.0-1_amd64.deb". https://packages.ubuntu.com/hirsute/amd64/refind/download. 
  12. "sys-boot/refind – Gentoo Packages". https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-boot/refind. 
  13. "rEFInd / Code / [08c617 /BUILDING.txt"]. https://sourceforge.net/p/refind/code/ci/master/tree/BUILDING.txt. 
  14. dakanji (6 March 2021), dakanji/RefindPlus, GitHub, https://github.com/dakanji/RefindPlus, retrieved 7 March 2021