rEFIt: A Graphical Boot Menu for Your Mac

Even though Macs come in way fewer versions than PCs, they are not gaming consoles. If you’re a tinkerer by heart, like me, you like to experiment with your Mac. Why not? It’s a fine and powerful machine. Some people just can’t get enough of Mac OS X, but why not go all the way, ditch Boot Camp and try installing another operating system like FreeBSD or GNU/Linux yourself? Or do you want to try out a Live CD (bootable CDs containing an operating system that boots running in RAM, from the medium itself) without the hassle of special key bindings? That’s where rEFIt comes in. Most of you are probably familiar with the standard inflexible text boot interfaces, which let you choose the operating system upon boot. But come on, it’s not a PC we’re using, it’s a Mac. Why not make it more useful and prettier at the same time?

The rEFIT project describes itself as a ‘boot menu and maintenance toolkit for EFI-based machines like the Intel Macs.’ EFI, or the Extensible Firmware Interface, is a spec for a software interface between our OS and the Mac’s firmware. It’s basically a new and improved BIOS, used in place of the legacy BIOS used on IBM-compatible PCs. That is why most ‘OS-hoppers’ use rEFIt. While it enables you to select your OS of choice upon boot, there are also other neat functions, such as the option to shutdown, reboot and a basic terminal. It even recognizes Live CDs so you can select them instead of having to push the C key when you want to check out a bootable CD.

rEFIt is nice because it is able to recognize what’s on the hard drive, detect what you’ve installed and see if there’s a bootable medium inside. It’s a welcome change from the old PC boot loaders like GRUB or the standard Windows boot loader. Now you can overwrite an operating system without the fear that you won’t be able to boot into it without significant tweaks. And I’m not a big Boot Camp fan — this is a Free Software Project, so it’s not going anywhere. It’s actually quite surprising how a little piece of software can change your Mac experience. The beauty of owning a MacBook is getting that urge to tweak everything to your liking. I

In conclusion, rEFIt is certainly a piece of software any OS explorer will love. The project is still active, and I’m sure we’ll see more improvements in future versions, but at the moment they’ve already got something cool for all of us. So don’t wait any longer and download it!