rEFInd

rEFInd is an open-source boot manager for EFI/UEFI systems, created as a modern fork of the rEFIt project to provide a graphical boot menu and automatic detection of installed operating systems. It is designed to replace the firmware’s default boot picker on systems that use UEFI, offering a more user-friendly interface for selecting which operating system to boot.

Operation and configuration: rEFInd is installed on the system’s EFI System Partition as an EFI application (for example refind_x64.efi on 64-bit x86 systems, with equivalents for other architectures). On startup it reads its configuration from refind.conf, or can generate a default menu automatically. It scans connected drives and ESPs for boot loaders and Linux kernel images, presenting them as selectable entries with icons. Users can customize labels, order, and appearance via the configuration file and optional themes.

Features and capabilities: The boot manager supports automatic detection of Windows, macOS, Linux, and other OS boot loaders, and can boot Linux kernels directly when suitable images are found. It supports chainloading to other bootloaders (such as Windows Boot Manager or GRUB), supports booting from external media, and offers theming options, including icons and backgrounds. It works with multiple filesystems and can manage boot entries across different drives and partitions.

Security and compatibility: rEFInd is designed to work with modern UEFI firmware across architectures, including x86-64, IA-32, and ARM. It provides Secure Boot compatibility through signed binaries and shim-based setups used by many Linux distributions.

History and licensing: rEFInd is a continuation of the rEFIt project and is maintained by Rod Smith and an active community. It is distributed under a permissive open-source license (a BSD-like license) and is widely used to manage dual-boot configurations and recovery scenarios.