refind-theme-regular VS wubiuefi

My boot manager is refind (not grub), and the theme is refind-theme-regular

You can have multiple boot-loader partitions and it will detect them all without any additional setup from user. So if you are dual booting and accidentally formatted boot-loader for one operating system the other will still work. This happened lot of times for me. I accidentally deleted windows option when reinstalling linux a lot. You can also boot from usb directly from refind within needing to go into bios. You also mentioned config file for systemd being simple. Refind also has config file similar to that. And it has theming. I use this theme https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular

Theme: https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular

I actually managed to get it to work both ways: I can boot each OS in a VM from the other. A handful of scripts inside each detect the VM and make some changes appropriately (like disabling certain startup apps and services that I already have in the host OS, disabling some fancy graphics that like to glitch out in VMs, etc.). And because I like to over-complicate things, I set up static IPv4s, so I can for example connect to Linux with the same IP, not matter if it's in a VM or running on bare metal.

Also, regarding hating GRUB: take a look at rEFInd. The themes are way better [0] and it can autodetect operating systems so not only is it harder to break your system with a bad config, it'll detect USB boot devices as well so you don't have to mash F11 or whatever if you need to boot from one. It also has mouse support and (in theory) also touchscreen.

[0] https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular

Finally I installed a simple minimal theme https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular and added the OpenCore logo to the icons folder.

I use this one.

For me, Refind it's the best bootloader for dual boot. With a theme like this it's quite pretty : https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular

I use this rEFInd theme and convert them into .icns

I would like to switch from grub to rEFInd because it has this specific theme but my main concern is: will it have an option for booting into snapshots? is a handy feature with something breaks on a update but if not that's fine!

If you want to theme refind, I suggest this beautiful theme which has distro icons for all operating systems: https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular

wubi was also awesome letting install and use Ubuntu as a single file on your Windows drive

There is a modern fork which more or less works https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi

Looks like someone already did! https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi/releases

Went down a rabbit hole clicking that link and discovered a modern fork of it that still works today! https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi

Link: https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi

I wish Ubuntu didn't kill Wubi tho. We used that at my first workplace on laptops with Windows and it was so damn good. There is a new fork [0] but it's a hit and miss with modern UEFI and especially with Windows 11 (had to use it for some reason). And other distros never had an option like this afaik, none does as of today. But I know it's all about Docker, VMs, or WSL nowadays yet Wubi covered a niche segment which was pefect.

0, https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi

Wubi. It creates an iso inside your partition and you can delete it without any hassle. It's a little slower than running on bare metal though.

If you have Windows installed, you can try WubiUEFI (if you have a UEFI system). It installs like any other windows app and can be removed if needed. https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi/releases/tag/20044r344

Yeah ther's a new version of it https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi .

It's called WubiUEFI