Cfrgtkky

When I start up Ubuntu there is a message 'Advanced format for Ubuntu'as the second choice for the startup. Should I use that or just keep on using the top one? I am an 80-year-old slowbee!!!!

You can use the first one, the other advanced options (that's how it's called when I start my pc) give you the possibility to boot with a different kernel in case your current environment just doesn't work and you can't seem to get it to work, or you can go into recovery options from there.

You can check them out if you click on it, but in most cases you won't need to do that.

In case you want to customize it (like delete entries etc.), there are some possibilities listed in this tutorial for grub 1 here and grub 2 here, depending on the version displayed on the top of that screen.

You can ignore the "Advanced options for Ubuntu" menu for now. It may be needed if things "go wrong", and you need to boot earlier versions of the Ubuntu Linux kernel, or boot with different options. This is a rare event, and may never happen.

In a terminal window, on MY system, I did:

grep -E 'menuentry|submenu' /boot/grub/grub.cfg

if [ x"${feature_menuentry_id}" = xy ]; then

  menuentry_id_option="--id"

  menuentry_id_option=""

export menuentry_id_option

menuentry 'Ubuntu' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

submenu 'Advanced options for Ubuntu' $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-advanced-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-43-generic-advanced-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic (upstart)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-43-generic-init-upstart-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-43-generic-recovery-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-42-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-42-generic-advanced-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-42-generic (upstart)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-42-generic-init-upstart-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

    menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-42-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-4.15.0-42-generic-recovery-7e2beb8f-393b-4445-ab82-69824a812d6c' {

menuentry 'Memory test (memtest86+)' {

menuentry 'Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)' {

to see what my choices were.

I found a better solution at this AskUbuntu answer:

$ awk -F' '/menuentry / {print $2}' /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Ubuntu

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-45-generic

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-45-generic (upstart)

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-45-generic (recovery mode)

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic (upstart)

Ubuntu, with Linux 4.15.0-43-generic (recovery mode)

Memory test (memtest86+)

Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)