On Sun,30.May.10, 22:50:44, Stephan Seitz wrote: > On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 07:11:19PM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote: > >The main problem with grub1 is the same as with lilo: there is no > >upstream maintainer, and crucial parts of the code are undocumented > >and not understandable¹. > > But at least grub1 is working in a wider field than grub2. And lilo > is still working, too. Maybe not with the current Debian kernel, but > it works for people building their own kernel. > > >So which bootloader should be the default? Grub1 is also lacking > >important features, albeit different ones than grub2 (e.g. ext4 > >support). > > Maybe, but ext4 support is not really crucial. Simply make /boot ext2. Having /boot on a separate partition for robustness, security or advanced features (encrypted LVM and stuff) is one thing, but having it because the default bootloader doesn't support current (ext4) and future (btrfs) filesystems seems like a hack to me. > I would say, the default bootloader should be grub1, expert > installation can offer grub2 as well. Lilo should be in the > distribution as well, so people can switch after installation. At > least for the next release. Is it just me or does this sound like the KDE3 -> KDE4 debate all over again? Don't get me wrong, I've had my part of headaches with grub2 (I switched quite early), but most are fixed, so grub2 does almost everything *I* need. Also, the config has become so complicated you need another config file (/etc/default/grub) to configure how it will be generated :( I read grub2 is still missing features (like simultaneous display on a serial console and VGA), and it is (still?) incompatible with some software (Stephen's case), but we have to face it: * LILO is not developed anymore * Grub1 is not developed anymore Unless there are people interested in further developing those code bases they will be gone sooner or later. And my feeling (as a non-programmer) is that they have become unmaintainable, or at least it has become too much work compared to writing something from scratch (grub2, extlinux, ...). AFAICT, the only thing that we as users can do (short of putting up bounties) is to push for the missing features to be implemented and the bugs to be fixed. But none of this will happen unless we are at least willing to *test* the new stuff. At least the regulars on this list should know how to recover from an unbootable system, or not? Regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
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