When you startup your new Ubuntu installation, you may notice that the boot process seems to pause at a certain point. A counter appears at the top of the screen saying something about pressing 'ESC' in a certain number of seconds.
This is the point at which you can choose how your computer boots. If
you have a Windows installation and are setup to dual boot Ubuntu with
it, now is the time to press 'ESC' and select your operating system.
You have 3 seconds.
If you are dual booting and use your Windows XP or Vista system with some frequency, this may seem a bit short. As with all things Linux, you can configure the bootloader, grub, to allow more or less time before booting the default operating system. Follow these instructions to change grub's timeout limit:
- Startup Ubuntu as usual
- Press Alt-F2 (i.e., depress 'Alt' and, without releasing it, press 'F2') for a 'Run Application' dialogue box
- Type 'gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst' (without the quotation marks)
- When prompted, enter your password. See "Ubuntu Root Access" if you have trouble at this point. You will then be presented with a GEdit window in which the configuration file for grub is reflected.
- Around the 16th line of the file, you will see the entry "timeout sec". Three lines below that is the word "timeout" and a number.
## timeout sec
Changing the number sets how long grub waits. In the main, 10 seconds is more than enough time to choose an operating system without delaying the boot process too long. Most users find 5 is long enough. How long you wait is up to you.
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 3## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 10 - Save the file
- Close the application
You should note that this change will only affect how long grub waits to boot Ubuntu. It does not change other dynamics of the boot process. If you want the boot menu to be visible by default, see "How Can I Make Grub's Menu Visible When I Start the Computer?" If you do not want Ubuntu to be the default, see "Setting the Default Operating System" for how to to make another operating system the default (Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.).