Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@fastmail.com>]

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016, at 10:53, Felix Miata wrote:
> Stephen Powell composed on 2016-07-09 08:58 (UTC-0400):
> 
>> As for features, LILO has all the features that I need.
> 
> One feature it never acquired AFAIK, which Grub shares with Syslinux, is the 
> ability to edit the kernel cmdline at boot time, before kernel load. With 
> problematic hardware, problematic BIOS, and pre-release kernel and distro 
> versions, that ability is a big troubleshooting convenience. It's one of the 
> features that facilitated my decision to migrate from OS/2 to Linux as 
> primary OS.

Not true.  I use the traditional text-mode interface of LILO (install=text).
To supply kernel options during boot, press the Shift key (by itself) before
the "delay" timer expires to get a boot prompt ("boot:").  Then type the
label of the kernel you want followed by the desired boot parameters.
For example,

   Linux single

to boot the kernel in single-user mode.  Or

   Linux forcepae

to get a PAE-requiring kernel to boot on a Banias-class Pentium M or
Celeron M processor, if you forgot to specify

   append="forcepae"

in /etc/lilo.conf before running lilo.  If you can't remember the names of
your kernel labels, press the Tab key at a "boot:" prompt.  LILO will
display the names of your kernel labels followed by another "boot:" prompt.

I've never used the menu-based interface of LILO, but I'm sure that there
is a way to supply kernel options at boot time with the menu-based interface
as well.

See my LILO web page at

   http://www.stevesdebianstuff.org/lilo.htm

for more information.

P.S.  I used to use OS/2 as well.  But I switched because OS/2, after Warp 4,
was more or less abandoned by IBM.  Besides, Linux is free.  If I had known
about Linux back then, I would probably have gone straight from DOS to Linux.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    <zlinuxman@fastmail.com>
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