Polishing

After setting up everything to your satisfaction, you can save the settings and click Close. Depending on how much material the StartUp Manager has to convert and configure, saving the settings can take 20 to 30 seconds.

Don't interrupt the tool whatever you do. Doing so will leave Grub's configuration file, /boot/grub/menu.lst, in an inconsistent state, which could cause the system to do something strange the next time you boot.

The next time you launch Linux you will (hopefully) see a neat, new splash screen. The text in the Grub selection menu might be difficult to read depending on your choice of background image, but don't worry. After booting, you can launch the StartUp Manager again and modify the background, selection bar and text colors in the Appearance tab. Also, don't forget to check Apply colors to boot menu.

Very little can go wrong with the USplash image. In the worst case – for example, if you choose the wrong resolution or color depth – the screen might go blank for a couple of seconds until the Display Manager comes up with the login screen. If this happens, modify the Display settings in the StartUp Manager's Boot Options tab. Although higher resolutions and color depths will typically give you more attractive results, you do need to keep to the physical limits of your graphics adapter and display.

Conclusions

Just a couple of manual steps lets you customize some important system files to suit your own tastes. In addition, you do not need to be well versed in configuration syntax to achieve some attractive results.