Comment 105 for bug 1311247

On Mint 17.1 KDE, here. Yes this bug has been bugging me for the last few days!

I just installed grub2 - 2.02~beta2-21. Only booted up a couple of times since, but all seems fine.

Get it here: https://packages.debian.org/sid/grub2-common

On AMD64 you'd then go to: https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/grub2-common/download, where you're advised to add the repo to your /etc/apt/sources.list. In my case that is: deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian sid main.

My sources.list - opened as text with root - showed only the commented out CD-ROM entry. I added the above, below it.

Running the Update Manager - selecting to show levels 1 through 5 - refreshing now showed a great many updates that, obviously, or presumably, one does not want in Mint, so clicking Clear deselected them. Then just selected 'Grub' and installed.

Not knowing if the bug was in part at least a problem with /boot/grub/grub.conf I allowed the installation to replace my user-edited version, with the consequence that on reboot instead of Linux Mint <etc etc> it just listed Ubuntu. Having backed up grub.conf I then replaced 'Ubuntu' with the previous version's 'Linux Mint <etc etc>' - changing only the menu-entry names.

Then back in Update Manager, deselect showing levels 4 and 5 updates, then in Software Sources deselect the added debian sid main repo, close, reboot. Now the dozens of probably-unwanted updates are no longer displayed. So far, so good.