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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: 3/23/2012, referencing rEFInd 0.2.2</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>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 </ul>
 139
 140 <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>
 141
 142 <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>
 143
 144 <hr />
 145
 146 <p>copyright &copy; 2012 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
 147
 148 <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>
 149
 150 <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>
 151
 152 <p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>
 153
 154 <p><a href="getting.html">Learn how to obtain rEFInd</a></p>
 155
 156   <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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