rEFInd boot manager
Ranked 6 of 7 bootloaders by recommenders
People recommend rEFInd as a simple UEFI boot manager: one EFI entry and one plain text config file that needs no changes when the kernel updates.
People recommend rEFInd as a simple UEFI boot manager: one EFI entry and one plain text config file that needs no changes when the kernel updates.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not 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: not 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
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not 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
Simple: one EFI entry, one text file
“one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition, nothing that needs to change when the kernel updates”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE” “rEFInd is _so_ much simpler: one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE”
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 |
| U-Boot | 9 | 3 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| GNU GRUB | 9 | 24 | 27% | 5 | — | — |
| rEFInd boot managerThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“rEFInd has been a good general purpose bootloader, simple tool.”
“I'm using rEFInd because it can load and use the NVMe EFI driver unlike GRUB and systemd-boot.”
“They only work on UEFI. I don't like UEFI.”
“one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition, nothing that needs to change when the kernel updates”
“rEFInd is _so_ much simpler: one efi entry, one text config file in the efi partition”
“The only boot loader on uefi I like is refind”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.