ZFSBootMenu
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 7 bootloaders by recommenders
Recommended for snapshot rollback and recovery outside the main OS, though critics say it only boots Linux kernels.
Recommended for snapshot rollback and recovery outside the main OS, though critics say it only boots Linux kernels.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 87%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Praised as easy and well liked
“I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked back.”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop” “zfsbootmenu looks very cool, thanks for sharing!”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “TCP Use-After-Free: CVE-2026-98432 / CVSS 9.8” “ZFSBootMenu and Alpine are a beautiful match.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Frood, an Alpine Initramfs NAS” - Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “A brief look at FreeBSD”
- Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE”
- Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “FreeBSD”
Snapshot rollback and full restores
“So that backups are easy, snapshots are cheap, and when the inevitable happens, it takes a few minutes to reboot and roll back.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?” “the ability to roll back to snapshots and restore/maintenance disks from outside of the primary operating system”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “I personally also use ZFSBootMenu which lets you clone an old snapshot if e.g. the kernel breaks”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Creating a Bootable Backup USB with Encryption (for Pop!OS Linux)” - Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 1 – configuring ZFS mirror (RAID1)”
- Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “TCP Use-After-Free: CVE-2026-98432 / CVSS 9.8”
Recovery tools outside the main OS
“the ability to roll back to snapshots and restore/maintenance disks from outside of the primary operating system”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Stop making swap partitions—use swap files instead” “offers remote SSH access with FDE in addition to snapshots in case of update falures or other issues”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Remotely unlocking an encrypted hard disk” Comparable to FreeBSD boot tools
“I would switch to BSD before i would use linux again without a competent bootmanager and filesystem.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Creating a Bootable Backup USB with Encryption (for Pop!OS Linux)” “ZFSBootMenu is a Linux oriented solution that replicates the power of FreeBSD's bootloader”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Unpowered SSDs slowly lose data”
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 |
| ZFSBootMenuThis page | 13 | 2 | 87% | 8 | — | Approved |
| U-Boot | 9 | 3 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| GNU GRUB | 9 | 24 | 27% | 5 | — | — |
| OpenCore | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“zfsbootmenu looks very cool, thanks for sharing!”
“rolling back with zfsbootmenu is easy”
“the ability to roll back to snapshots and restore/maintenance disks from outside of the primary operating system”
“ZFSBootMenu and Alpine are a beautiful match.”
“I'd probably personally just throw on zfsbootmenu”
“I use zfsbootmenu and I love it.”
“I would switch to BSD before i would use linux again without a competent bootmanager and filesystem.”
“I personally also use ZFSBootMenu which lets you clone an old snapshot if e.g. the kernel breaks”
“offers remote SSH access with FDE in addition to snapshots in case of update falures or other issues”
“it only knows how to boot a Linux kernel”
“zfsbootmenu is really nice.”
“it also has great documentation with installation guides for a range of distros”
“the entire root dataset is in the snapshot, so it's a complete restore”
“I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked back.”
“ZFSBootMenu is a Linux oriented solution that replicates the power of FreeBSD's bootloader”
“I found it to be quite a bit of work.”
“ZFSBootMenu is easier and better”
“So that backups are easy, snapshots are cheap, and when the inevitable happens, it takes a few minutes to reboot and roll back.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.