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Boot and live system

GRUB, the live system on SquashFS, how the ISO is mastered, and the animated boot splash.

Boot loader: GRUB 2 (+ shim for Secure Boot on installed systems)

• Alternatives: systemd-boot, rEFInd, Limine.
• Why: GRUB is the only option that boots both legacy BIOS and UEFI from the same USB stick. It detects Windows for dual boot (os-prober), and Debian signs it for Secure Boot. systemd-boot is UEFI-only.

Live system: live-boot + SquashFS (zstd)

• Alternatives: casper (Ubuntu), dracut's dmsquash-live (Fedora).
• Why: live-boot is Debian's native live stack and is what Debian's own live images use. zstd compression keeps the image small while decompressing much faster than xz.

ISO mastering: grub-mkrescue + xorriso

• Alternatives: live-build, isohybrid with syslinux.
• Why: it produces one hybrid image that boots from DVD or USB, BIOS or UEFI, with a single GRUB configuration and theme.

Boot splash: Plymouth (script theme)

• Alternatives: no splash, a static image theme.
• Why: Plymouth is standard across distributions and handles disk-encryption passphrase prompts. Our script theme plays a frame animation (the logo draws itself, then shimmers) rendered by our own code. greetd has no built-in Plymouth hand-over like GDM's, so a drop-in quits the splash when the login starts.