Dualbooting your computer can be a chore, the more switching between OSes you have to do – which is why virtualization or acquiring independent desktops are the go-to for a lot of. Failing that, we have no choice but to easy about our dualbooting knowledge with different workarounds and helpers. [William Somsky] shares one particular these types of helper device with us – an sophisticated gadget built with a RP2040-sporting TinyPICO board and a three-way rocker switch, directing GRUB to boot into either Home windows or Linux quickly, or leave us with the typical boot menu. This way, you can just flip the swap, hit “reboot” and wander away, coming again to your Laptop booted into OS of your alternative, as an alternative of timing your existence just so that you can catch the boot menu on time.

All you want to do is to solder a rocker change to your RP2040 board of option, then flash the RP2040 with code that detects the point out of the switch, and produces a mass storage unit web hosting a file placing a Grub variable to possibly one of the , 1 or 2. [William] describes his journey, fighting mysterious caching challenges, but tells us he acquired it doing the job in the end. Unfortunately, [William] hasn’t shared the RP2040-aspect code with us, but he has at minimum set the Grub’s tailor made.cfg file in the ‘Files’ section of the Hackaday.io job.

Quickly obtainable microcontrollers with mass storage capabilities sure enable make these hacks straightforward – before, we’ve found dualboot switching like this finished by modifying assembly code of the MBR. Dualbooting is a hacker’s ceremony of passage, and sure OSes of late can make it harder than other ones. Even if you never want to dualboot your Computer, on the other hand, you certain can dualboot an Arduino!