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I have Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Windows 10 installed on my machine. I want to update the order of entries in the grub menu so that the default (first) entry is Ubutnu 18.04. The solutions available online suggest manually changing the default to a specific entry, with a specific kernel version. However, after kernel update, won't I need to again change the order to put the latest version on top?

I notice I have this kind of "generic" entry (the first entry, called "Ubuntu") which always loads the last kernel version available of Ubuntu 16.04. How can I have an entry with the same behavior for Ubuntu 18.04 and move it to the top? Also, could someone explain how this entry works? I couldn't find anything online about it.

P.S: I tried changing the order and saving with Grub-customizer, but it didn't actually change it! Also, it seems to be inconsistent, because in the first entry named "Ubuntu", when I click edit, I find that it has this part "linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-25-generic". So, it seems to be referring to Ubuntu 18.04 kernel, but when I open the same entry from boot menu, it opens Ubuntu 16.04 instead.

Thank you.

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    Your system has one active MBR (per drive, bios will control which drive is used), so you must use grub-customizer or make changes on the system that owns the MBR. If it's 16.04, changes made in 18.04 will be unused and vice-versa. Changes made to /boot/grub/grub.cfg will be overwritten on next update-grub (including kernel updates), but changes made to /etc/default/grub will not be lost (ie. that's where to make changes, but you need to run update-grub to see the changes copied to your grub.cfg file). – guiverc Jul 23 '19 at 11:14
  • can you show grep -i "menuentry '" /boot/grub/grub.cfg|sed -r "s|--class .*$||g"|nl -v 0 – nobody Jul 23 '19 at 12:13
  • @guiverc Thank you, that explains why grub-customizer had no effect. I will try again from 16.04 and tell you the result. But I still would like to have that generic Ubuntu entry for 18.04 :) – Karim Sonbol Jul 23 '19 at 12:29
  • @nobody here is the output: paste.ubuntu.com/p/kfSzF2YFyj – Karim Sonbol Jul 23 '19 at 12:31
  • you are right something ist messed up. All ubuntu entries point to /dev/sda7 fdisk -l 2>/dev/null | egrep "Disk /|/dev/" | sed "s#^/dev/#Part /dev/#" | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/://' | xargs -n1 -IX sudo sh -c "hexdump -v -s 0x80 -n 2 -e '2/1 \"%x\" \"\\n\"' X | xargs -n1 -IY sh -c \"case \"Y\" in '48b4') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.96 ;; 'aa75' | '5272') echo X: GRUB Legacy ;; '7c3c') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.97 oder v1.98 ;; '020') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.99 ;; *) echo X: Kein GRUB Y ;; esac\"" – nobody Jul 23 '19 at 12:59
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The distribution you booted from when sudo update-grub was last run becomes option 1. Ubuntu on the grub main menu.

When 18.04 isn't the first option, boot into it and run sudo update-grub then it becomes the first option.

Note: If a system update installs a new kernel then update-grub is run as part of the process automatically.

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I was able to solve this based on @guiverc comment:

Your system has one active MBR (per drive, bios will control which drive is used), so you must use grub-customizer or make changes on the system that owns the MBR. If it's 16.04, changes made in 18.04 will be unused and vice-versa. Changes made to /boot/grub/grub.cfg will be overwritten on next update-grub (including kernel updates), but changes made to /etc/default/grub will not be lost (ie. that's where to make changes, but you need to run update-grub to see the changes copied to your grub.cfg file).

So, using Grub-customizer from Ubuntu 16.04, since it is the system that owns the MBR on my drive, I was able to re-order the entries, and the generic entry "Ubuntu" for Ubuntu 18.04 was already available in the entry list, so I didn't need to choose a specific kernel version.

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