Should I delete grub-tools? And if yes, how can I do it?

On the latest news it says this:

It is up to you if you want to remove it. We recommend it, but it is your choice.

The details around why we are removing it are covered in the Nova announcement.

You can remove it with:

pacman -R grub-tools
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If you install EndeavourOS from the latest ISO, you won’t get grub-tools by default.

So if you want your system to be more similar to what you’d get by default if you installed right now, remove it.

Keep in mind that if you remove it, you have to regenerate grub.cfg manually (by running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg) every time you install a new kernel in order for it to show as a boot option in your GRUB menu.

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:point_up_2:
Since I was having the same question recently, I’ll add some info I gathered.

From my own research and help from the wonderful EnOS community, I’ve compiled a list of what grub-tools does (to my understanding):

  • regenerates grub config after installing/uninstalling a kernel or a microcode
  • fixes the initrd generation (fixes how grub-mkconfig handles the results from os-prober for Arch-based distros)
  • adds an environment variable to enable/disable os-prober
  • changes how the grub menu entry for EnOS looks (sure love running linux with linux linux :smiley: )

If none of these are an issue for you then you should probably remove it. If they are then it’s probably still a good idea to remove it and learn how to deal with those manually.

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  • regenerates grub config after installing/uninstalling a kernel or a microcode
  • fixes the initrd generation (fixes how grub-mkconfig handles the results from os-prober for Arch-based distros

Could you explain a little more what they do?

  • changes how the grub menu entry for EnOS looks (sure love running linux with linux linux :smiley: )

Is this the “purple” (sorry I don’t have a better way to refer to it) screen that appears when I boot the pc?

Also, is it still included on Nova? that’s the version I downloaded and installed.

I’m sorry, I just checked the Nova page.

No, it shouldn’t be. You can check with pacman -Q grub-tools

Yeah, I don’t have it installed. Thanks :grin:

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In that case you don’t need to remove it. :rofl:

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Haha, yeah I don’t :rofl:

Looks like you’re set then :smiley:

I’m pretty new to linux to be honest, but I’ll try my best.

I never installed other kernels but this is my understanding of how it works.
When you install a new kernel you have to regenerate the grub config in order for it to add a new entry in the grub menu for that kernel. grub-tools did that automatically.

This only really matters if you’re multi-booting with other arch based distros. Apparently grub-mkconfig generates the entries for arch based distros incorrectly when using os-prober.

Yup. I don’t know the exact name for it but “grub menu” is what I’ve been calling it.

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Thanks for explaining! :+1: