Re: Is this statement correct?
On 17:37 Thu 17 Feb, Lisi (lisi.reisz@gmail.com) wrote:
> Is this statement correct? It comes in the textbook for a course I am doing.
> <quote>
> Grub (Grand Unified Bootloader) is the boot program of the GNU project.
> </quote>
>
> If so, where does LILO fit in?
The longer, more formal name of Debian is "Debian GNU/Linux". It is called that
because the core of the system is the fusion of the Linux kernel (which is not
part of the GNU project) with the basic GNU tools (such as the programs found
in the "coreutils" package, for example). The Debian project wished to acknowledge
the major contribution that the GNU project made to the distribution in the
early days (and still continues to do so).
That being said, there are many packages in Debian which are not maintained by
the GNU project. In fact, I think it is safe to say that of the 29,000 or so
packages in the Debian system, probably the majority of them are not maintained
by the GNU project.
There are a number of boot loaders available in Debian. I only know of two of
them that are maintained by the GNU project. And of those two, only one of
them, grub-pc (Grub version 2) is still being actively maintained. (Grub version
1 is the other GNU boot loader. But it is no longer being actively maintained.)
So yes, I believe that the statement is technically correct.
However, that does not mean that Grub 2 is the only boot loader available or
supported in the Debian distribution. There are others, such as extlinux,
LILO, etc., that are available in the distribution but which are not maintained
by the GNU project. On one of the hardware platforms that I support, s390,
there is only one boot loader available, zipl, (part of the s390-tools package)
and it is maintained by IBM, not the GNU project.
So don't worry. LILO will probably be around as long as there are people
who are able and willing to maintain it and as long as there are people who want to
use it.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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