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   7   <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: rEFInd Features</title>
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  12   <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />rEFInd Features</h1>
  13
  14   <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
  15 href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
  16
  17   <p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update: 4/5/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.4</p>
  18
  19
  20 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
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  85
  86 <hr />
  87
  88 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>
  89
  90 <hr />
  91
  92 <p>rEFInd is a fork of the <a href="http://refit.sourceforge.net">rEFIt</a> boot manager. As such, it has many features in common with rEFIt. These include the following:</p>
  93
  94 <ul>
  95
  96 <li>Support for both text-mode and graphical operation.</li>
  97
  98 <li>Auto-detection of EFI and BIOS boot loaders.</li>
  99
 100 <li>User-configurable graphics and icons&mdash;you can set your own background, set new icons, and so on.</li>
 101
 102 <li>Launch EFI boot loaders or, on Macs, launch BIOS-based boot loaders. (I have yet to get the BIOS-launching feature to work on a UEFI-based PC, but it might work on a model I don't own.)</li>
 103
 104 <li>Launch options for an EFI shell, disk partitioner, and other optional external components. (See the <a href="installing.html">Installing rEFInd</a> section for information on how to obtain and install these components.)</li>
 105
 106 <li>Set OS-specific boot options, such as to launch Mac OS X with verbose text-mode debug messages.</li>
 107
 108 </ul>
 109
 110 <p>I've used rEFIt on a couple of computers for over a year, but I've found that it has some frustrating limitations. It tends to flood the screen with non-functional BIOS boot options, for instance; and it has a number of bugs on UEFI-based systems. I therefore expanded on rEFIt, giving rEFInd features that improve on or go beyond those of rEFIt, such as:</p>
 111
 112 <ul>
 113
 114 <li>User-configurable methods of detecting boot loaders:
 115
 116     <ul>
 117     <li>Auto-detection of EFI boot loaders, independently on internal hard disks, external hard disks, and optical discs.</li>
 118     <li>Auto-detection of BIOS boot loaders, independently on internal hard disks, external hard disks, and optical discs.</li>
 119     <li>Manually via the configuration file</li>
 120     </ul>
 121
 122     You can select which of these methods to use to construct the rEFInd main boot menu. Although rEFIt supports auto-detection, it does not support manual configuration; and rEFIt's options to enable, disable, and prioritize individual boot loader detection methods are primitive compared to those in rEFInd.</li>
 123
 124 <li>The ability to fine-tune options passed to EFI boot loaders, via manual configuration.</li>
 125
 126 <li>Proper handling of more OS options than can fit on the screen. (rEFIt displays an empty list in graphical mode when it detects too many OSes.)</li>
 127
 128 <li>Additional OS icons (all of which are Linux distributions, at least so far). This can make it easier to find a specific distribution in the boot list if you've installed multiple Linux distributions.</li>
 129
 130 <li>The ability to auto-detect Linux initial RAM disk files and to read Linux kernel options from a <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file. These features support (nearly) automatic handling of Linux kernels with embedded EFI stub loader support (a new feature with Linux 3.3.0).</li>
 131
 132 <li>Fixes to display problems on many UEFI-based PCs.</li>
 133
 134 <li>Workarounds to file detection bugs in at least one type of UEFI firmware.</li>
 135
 136 <li>Improved detection of itself, to keep rEFInd out of its own boot menu.</li>
 137
 138 <li>An "exit" option (disabled by default), so that you can return to whatever shell or boot manager you used to launch rEFInd, should this ability be desirable. (This feature first appeared in rEFInd 0.2.4.)</li>
 139
 140 </ul>
 141
 142 <p>On the flip side, at least for Mac users, rEFInd comes with less sophisticated Mac installation tools than does rEFIt, in favor of more OS-agnostic packaging. Also, rEFInd doesn't support loading EFI drivers; that job should be done in other ways when using rEFInd.</p>
 143
 144 <p>If these features sound useful, then read on and try rEFInd. If not, you may need to look elsewhere. My <a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html">Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux</a> page may be useful to you in this case.</p>
 145
 146 <hr />
 147
 148 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 149
 150 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>
 151
 152 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>
 153
 154 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 155
 156 <p><a href="getting.html">Learn how to obtain rEFInd</a></p>
 157
 158   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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