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EntityQ212885· pop 37· linked from 347 articles

Also known as GRUB, GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, Grand Unified Bootloader, GRUB2

boot loader package

Key facts

Original author
Erich Boleyn
Developer
GNU Project
Initial release
1995 ; 31 years ago ( 1995 )
Stable release
2.14 / 14 January 2026
Written in
Assembly , C
Operating system
Linux , GNU/Hurd , macOS , BSD , ( Solaris / illumos (x86 port)), and Windows (through chainloading)
Platform
IA-32 , x86-64 , IA-64 , ARM , PowerPC , Power ISA , s390x , MIPS , RISC-V , LoongArch and SPARC
Available in
English and others
Type
Bootloader
License
2007: GPL-3.0-or-later , 1999: GPL-2.0-or-later
Website
www .gnu .org /software /grub /
Repository
gitlab .freedesktop .org /gnu-grub /grub

via Wikipedia infobox

~19 min read

Encyclopedic overview

GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, commonly referred to as GRUB) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer set up for multi-booting or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular operating system's partitions.

GNU GRUB was developed from a package called the Grand Unified Bootloader (a play on Grand Unified Theory). It is predominantly used for Unix-like systems.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “GNU GRUB” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.