Grub — Matrix/Cyberpunk Theme

What it is

A dark cyberpunk theme for the GRUB2 boot menu — terminal typography with glowing cyan/green accents, a semi-transparent frosted menu box, a glowing timeout progress bar, and an optional frame-based binary rain background generator. The background itself is a cyberpunk take on the Iranian flag, processed to be GRUB-safe at 1920×1080 (TrueColor, non-interlaced, stripped).

Feature highlights

• 9-patch frosted UI — box_*.png semi-transparent menu container, select_*.png glowing selection, terminal_*.png terminal box (all rendered as 9-patch so they scale cleanly).
• Glowing progress bar — cyan #00f0ff fill over a dark track (__timeout__); alternate Matrix-green #00ff66 and amber #ffb000 palettes are one flag away.
• OS icons — 15 hand-made 32×32 monochrome/cyan icons (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Linux Mint, Manjaro, NixOS, Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, Void, Windows, UEFI, …).
• Binary rain compositor (src/generate_frames.sh) — ImageMagick truecolor frame generator for animated backgrounds.
• No-reboot preview — assets/preview.png composites a mock GRUB screenshot so you can review the design before touching the bootloader.
• Production-grade install (install.sh, 329 lines) — idempotent, font compilation, automatic backup, safe GRUB defaults injection, and a clean uninstall.sh that restores and re-runs grub-mkconfig.

Source layout

src/
├── theme.txt               # GRUB gfxmenu canvas (28%/44% centered layout)
└── generate_frames.sh      # binary rain compositor (ImageMagick)
assets/
├── background.png          # 1920x1080 cyberpunk Iranian flag (GRUB-safe)
├── preview.png / screenshot.png
├── box_*.png / select_*.png / terminal_*.png   # 9-patch sets
└── icons/                  # 32x32 OS icons
install.sh / uninstall.sh   # idempotent installer + clean revert

Getting started

cd Grub
./install.sh          # backup + font compile + install (root)
# remove later with:
./uninstall.sh

Why it stands out

A bootloader theme sounds cosmetic, but it’s fiddly low-level work: GRUB 2.02+ gfxmenu quirks, GRUB-safe image processing (no interlacing, no color-profile surprises), 9-patch scaling and careful idempotent install scripts so the machine never ends up unbootable. It shows attention to detail and the discipline to ship something safely that touches the boot path.