Stan Hoeppner wrote:
In what way is it a vast improvement over LILO? I've never had a problem with LILO. It's always "just worked", which is what a bootloader should do. So how exactly would grub be a better choice for me?
Nobody should be arguing that it's a better choice for someone who doesn't *need* it, but it's certainly modular and possibly can make itself tiny enough for people without special requirements (about the second sector, usually). Since there's few alternatives however, it should at least be considered by everyone.
[snip] What choice? Apparently the Debian team have decided there will be no bootloader choice when Squeeze becomes Stable. Supposedly at that point it's Grub2 or your system no longer boots. That's not much of a choice is it?
Since lilo is/will be incompatible with Debian stock kernels, I think there's no point in providing it in a standard d-i.
Now of course, we can still reasonably argue about two things:* Should it still be available and maintained in the official archive? This would mean adding big flashy debconf warnings stating that it's not compatible with a stock kernel. It's about newbies confusion and time spent maintaining an obsolete piece of software (sorry if sounds bad, but it really looks like it is, considering its development). I certainly hope it's a reasonable possibility.
* If yes, should it still be presented as an "expert" option in d-i? Why not, I guess. If not, should extlinux be extensively tested to be provided as an alternative choice in d-i? I really don't know how much work would be needed for this.
-thib