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Re: LILO



On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 12:39:28AM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > One can only wonder why BSD and Linux don't support the multiboot standard.
> 
> Easy one: the current system works reasonably well and noone bothered
> to implement multiboot since it doesn't give i386 that many benefits.

One of the main benefit (but not the sole one) is standardization. At the
moment, the bootloaders whether implement specific bootstrapping procedure
for different flavours of kernels, or chainload. This makes bootloaders
bigger or weaker. Secondly, the bootstrapping of Linux doesn't allow one to
give it, say, the name of the right module to load for a NIC detected by the
bootloader. You have to add everything whether in the kernel or in an initrd
or other root fs. So, even if Linux works well, it, as well of other things,
can be improved.

> 
> > GRUB development had stalled for a couple of years, but is now active for
> > over a year again, and it has catched up on all lines.  There really is no
> > reason to not use GRUB.
> 
> I still run into a system every so often that grub won't install on
> actually.

I use latest CVS versions and has been able to bootstrap OS where LILO
failed.

> 
> > Even better, there are some new commands which make using GRUB so simple.
> > You just do "setup (hd0)". 
> 
> Simple commands are no replacement for documentation though. Whatever
> you can say about lilo, it does have a pretty extensive manual.

That's more and more the case with GRUB. And, as suggested by Joey Hess, it
could be a great improvement if doc could be translated from _any_ language
in another one. There is a french GRUB howto, which seems to cover the needs
of the users, but no other translation. 
On the other hand, a bootloader is such a crucial thing that it is not sure
at all that it is an end-user task. So the so-called lack of documentation
is relative.
-- 
Thierry LARONDE, Centre de Ressources Informatiques, Archamps - France
http://www.cri74.org
PingOO, serveur de com sur distribution GNU/Linux: http://www.pingoo.org



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