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I've successfully installed ubuntu. I mostly use windows and occasionally use ubuntu for programming. As a result i placed windows above ubuntu in my BIOS. Is there an easy way to swap between them without changing bios setting (placing ubuntu above windows in boot order)

Aces
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  • What's your boot firmware? Is it 16-bit BIOS or is it UEFI? – mcendu Feb 18 '24 at 04:59
  • my boot firmware is uefi – Aces Feb 18 '24 at 06:03
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    Does this help? https://askubuntu.com/questions/100232/how-do-i-change-the-grub-boot-order – Will Feb 18 '24 at 06:54
  • I have created a script in both OSes that when run allowed me to select which OS was next to boot (ie. I could select in my GNU/Linux system (aka Ubuntu) OR from within windows which OS was the default on next boot; in my case the grub menu was on a partition BOTH OSes could read/write to, and the script would just replace that grub config with a pre-written one that did whatever I'd selected was to next occur)... but I'd not call that simple, it was more of a hack but it achieved my aim. I didn't change BIOS with that; as BIOS just boot into grub & what I wanted was set by the grub menu. – guiverc Feb 18 '24 at 07:43
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    Why do you think putting Windows higher in the boot order will solve your problem? Have you thought of just setting Windows as default in GRUB? – Daniel T Feb 18 '24 at 07:59
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    Does this answer your question? How do I set Windows to boot as the default in the boot loader? – Daniel T Feb 18 '24 at 07:59

1 Answers1

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There are several easy solutions to this:

  • Change the boot order in bios to boot linux and change the default os to boot in grub to windows and adjust the timeout to suit. Answers linked in comments describe this.
  • If you only occasionally boot linux and are using a EFI bios, most of them have a key (F11 frequently) to enter a bios boot menu where you can pick the OS to boot.
  • Grub also supports setting a "next boot" option. In grub, change DEFAUT=saved and then use grub-reboot to tell linux to boot windows next time. If you add this to a boot script, your system will then alternate operating systems on each boot. (Also described in https://superuser.com/questions/285755/boot-to-windows-once-from-grub-then-back-to-ubuntu-on-next-boot )

Note that if you choose the second option, updating linux may occasionally reset the boot order to put linux first.

user10489
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