GRUB4DOS
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GRUB v2 running in text mode
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| Original author(s) | Erich Boleyn |
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| Developer(s) | GNU Project |
| Initial release | 1995 |
| Stable release |
2.02 (GRUB 2) / April 26, 2017
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| Preview release |
2.02~rc2 (GRUB 2) / March 15, 2017
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| Repository | http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git, git://git.sv.gnu.org/grub.git |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | Assembly, C |
| Operating system | Linux, macOS, BSD, Solaris (x86 port) and Windows (through chainloading) |
| Platform | IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, ARM, PowerPC, MIPS and SPARC |
| Available in | English and others |
| Type | Bootloader |
| License | GNU GPL version 3 |
| Website | www |
GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular operating system's partitions.
GNU GRUB was developed from a package called the Grand Unified Bootloader (a play on Grand Unified Theory). It is predominantly used for Unix-like systems. The GNU operating system uses GNU GRUB as its boot loader, as do most Linux distributions and the Solaris operating system on x86 systems, starting with the Solaris 10 1/06 release.
When a computer is turned on, BIOS finds the configured primary bootable device (usually the computer's hard disk) and loads and executes the initial bootstrap program from the master boot record (MBR). The MBR is the first sector of the hard disk, with zero as its offset (sectors counting starts at zero). For a long time, the size of a sector has been 512 bytes, but since 2009 there are hard disks available with a sector size of 4096 bytes, called Advanced Format disks. As of October 2013[update], such hard disks are still accessed in 512-byte sectors, by utilizing the 512e emulation.
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