grub/lilo - Re: Whats with this new Debian installer?

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

hi ya john

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, John Summerfield wrote:

> >This is the major thing that annoys me. Which moron is it that
> >decided GRUB is better

i still like that comment :-)  

lots of good and bad morons .. but all wants it to be "better" ...

> grub _is_ better. How could you think otherwise?
> 
> Seriously, I can only think of one thing lilo does better.

what's the "one thing" ???

see my dumb list of better or worst below ... 
	( i'd like a to see a complete lilo vs grub of the various
	( good vs bad comparison of reasons put together

	"its better" does NOT justify that it is "better"
	and under what circumstance is it better 
	( it does make a difference )

better is relative to what the user wants or productivity or
the user level of how to cope with grub vs lilo
and the machine ability to boot or sit and wait or hang 
	- nothing we can do about the machine's ability to boot
	or not boot due to bios or filesystem issues

c ya
alvin

== i use both ... depending on what the customer prefers

lilo
====
	- does NOT care about the filesystem on the disk
	- bad that it hangs on li or lil  or 09090909090909

	- bad that it doesn't support bootsplash ??? 
	( or at least i don't recall being able to turn off boot messages
	( vs putting up a fancy background image while booting in lilo

		- is bootsplash important ??? 
		( to some it is extremely important, you live/die by it )

	- it can reboot itself to into another OS  with lilo -C xx.conf
	( good for regression testing of various kernels or distro
	( in that each time it boots, it boots a new kernel or distro
		on /dev/hda or /dev/hdc 
		- grub failed this test ..even if i changed menu.lst
		( i donno how to change stage1/stage2 yet )

		- grub did not like being installed into /dev/hdc
		when the primary (current0 boot disk is /dev/hda
		and told to boot /dev/hdc next time it boots

		- lilo was trivial 2 second change to make it do that
			( boot=/dev/hda in lilo.hda.conf vs 
			( boot=/dev/hdc in lilo.hdc.conf )

grub
=====
- needs to know the filesystem on the disk ( a bad thing )
	== a very very bad thing to require /usr/lib to boot ...

	== but trivially fixable if /usr/lib/{stage1,stage2} is moved
	== to /boot/grub instead

- has a nice command shell 
	- good .. you can do what you like if yoou knwow what to type
	- bad ... if you do NOT knwo what to type, let me out of grub jail

	- who came up with "edit" "select" "edit/change" "boot" sequence

- has a wierd syntax of "command options" part of the "good of grub" ??
	- i have other things to do than to [re]learn gazillion new
	options which might be needed or not

		root(hda0,0) -- huh...

	-- ask the newbie the question ...
		they'd say /dev/hda1 
		( machine assumes that means root=/dev/hda1 )

- bad that to make a grub floppy, you need to copy stage1, stage2
  which is sometimes in /usr/lib instead of /boot/grub
	in which case, how is it supposed ot boot if it needs
	to read /usr/lib first  ( it'd require a temporary initrd )


=== which is better ... just depends on what "better" means and 
=== does NOT mean that its better for "everybody"

	- which is better ... vi or emac ...

	( the problem is almost identical ... gazillion meta options 
	( and proper keystroke sequence you have to remember

-- end of fun ...