ArsGeek

Do you need a little more time in making an operating system decision at your Grub boot screen?  A little less?  Here’s how to quickly change your timeout in Grub.

First, we’ll copy the menu.lst file to a backup

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.bak

Next, we’ll gedit the menu.lst file and make a quick change.

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for this section:

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
timeout         10

That last line, with the number 10 - that’s how many seconds you’ve got to make a choice.  Change this number to whatever you like.  The next time you reboot, your change will be in place.