GNU GRUB
Shares rank 3 of 7 bootloaders by recommenders
Recommended for working on nearly any hardware and booting Linux, BSDs and Haiku, with a long track record. Critics find it overcomplicated and hard to recover when booting fails.
Recommended for working on nearly any hardware and booting Linux, BSDs and Haiku, with a long track record. Critics find it overcomplicated and hard to recover when booting fails.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 24
- approval share
- 27%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Boots many operating systems on many platforms
“GRUB works on BIOS, UEFI, x86, Arm, whatever. It boots Linux, all the BSDs, Haiku, whatever.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” “it does the job on more kit than, well, any of the alternatives”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Overcomplicated, too many moving parts
“I do think GRUB 2 really piled on more complexity than was needed; GRUB 0.99 was IMHO essentially the same features but way easier to configure.”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu wants to strip some of GRUB features in 26.10 for security purposes” “no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub “rescue” shell”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” “no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” - Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE”
- Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE”
- Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Linux from Scratch Ends SysVinit Support”
- Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu wants to strip some of GRUB features in 26.10 for security purposes”
Breaks and drops users into rescue shell
“no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub “rescue” shell”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” “no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” “Booting from Grub can be 'interesting' at times, if there's a weak point.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?” Unreliable, sometimes fails to boot
“I'm tired of the unreliability and have decided to write my own bootloader instead.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Linux from Scratch Ends SysVinit Support” “Booting from Grub can be 'interesting' at times, if there's a weak point.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Is Linux Safe to Daily drive in 2026?” “Half the time it just deletes the grub generated image for some reason”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “YouTube Removes Windows 11 Bypass Tutorials, Claims 'Risk of Physical Harm'” Security changes raise lock-down worries
“When something wrong is found with GRUB, the most sensible thing to do first is to fix it, not compromise it.”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Klode has been systematically stripping features from GRUB since 2021” “they're going to try to use it to make it impossible for you to run an operating system that isn't spyware”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu wants to strip some of GRUB features in 26.10 for security purposes” “Look at all these fun knobs attackers will be able to turn!”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Ubuntu wants to strip some of GRUB features in 26.10 for security purposes”
Other bootloaders people recommend
The four most recommended other bootloaders, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| systemd-boot | 14 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| ZFSBootMenu | 13 | 2 | 87% | 8 | — | Approved |
| GNU GRUBThis page | 9 | 24 | 27% | 5 | — | — |
| U-Boot | 9 | 3 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| OpenCore | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 37 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Grub is more extensively used and has a lot of features.”
“it is GRUB which behaves slowly during boot”
“the demon nightmare zalgo geiger world of Grub”
“you can use grub or something else, but then bootctl and systemd kexec stop working”
“no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub”
“i like grub, but i also remember pre-0.98 grub”
“Who wants a little worm in their computer?”
“it can load and use the NVMe EFI driver unlike GRUB and systemd-boot”
“it does the job on more kit than, well, any of the alternatives”
“I can't remember any time when its needless complexity was actually a net benefit”
“focused on improving everything except the UX of the one workflow”
“GRUB works on BIOS, UEFI, x86, Arm, whatever. It boots Linux, all the BSDs, Haiku, whatever.”
“no massive pile of templating and moving parts to mysteriously break dumping you at an impenetrable grub “rescue” shell”
“it is quite good when shit hits the fan”
“Agreed that grub is a mess”
“Grub2 is scary and complicated. Remove grub from the equation, and all the scary goes away.”
“Friends don't let friends use grub.”
“When something wrong is found with GRUB, the most sensible thing to do first is to fix it, not compromise it.”
“Removing ZFS boot is very unkind”
“I do think GRUB 2 really piled on more complexity than was needed; GRUB 0.99 was IMHO essentially the same features but way easier to configure.”
“Grub trying to be a smart ass and numbering things with its own nomenclature is ... funny.”
“Look at all these fun knobs attackers will be able to turn!”
“they're going to try to use it to make it impossible for you to run an operating system that isn't spyware”
“grub is ancient bloatware, it is way overcomplicated for what it does”
“This is so cool... thanks for sharing... bookmarked.”
“I'm tired of the unreliability and have decided to write my own bootloader instead.”
“The argon2id issue remains an annoying problem (AFAIK Grub still doesn't support argon2id)”
“Grub is tied together with a spider web of scripts calling each other”
“Booting from Grub can be 'interesting' at times, if there's a weak point.”
“the transition from Lilo to grub”
“a lot more secure than grub”
“Half the time it just deletes the grub generated image for some reason”
“a nice example of software bloat”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.