GRUB 2.00 Boot-Loader Officially Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GRUB 2.00 Boot-Loader Officially Released

This morning I wrote that the official GRUB 2.00 release was imminent but little did I know that it would be released just 12 hours later. After being in development for more than a decade, the GRUB 2.00 boot-loader has been officially released...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTEyODc

[Kano]

That was really fast after rc1. I hope debian puts it in wheezy before the freeze. 1.99 is however so extremely patched (over 22 package updates) that i don't know if that happens. But at least in experimental it should be.

[uid313]

Architectures

Nice with added Itanium and MIPS support.
Would it be possible for it to get ARM and SPARC support in the future?

It already have x86 and POWER. But lacks Alpha and HP-PA.

[curaga]

Now that's a nice feature list if any. About the only thing I'd wish was added is eltorito support, so that grub2 could boot any arbitrary CD on computers where the bios can't. (SBM doesn't work everywhere, and it would also be nicer if grub could do it natively).

[timofonic]

Nice with added Itanium and MIPS support.
Would it be possible for it to get ARM and SPARC support in the future?

It already have x86 and POWER. But lacks Alpha and HP-PA.

I always wondered about why Grub didn't support more architectures...

And well, would this mean Grub and Coreboot projects would converge some day and become one? Of course divided in two parts, depending on the avaibility to modify the bios on your hardware.

[curaga]

What'd be the advantage of grub on ARM? Everyone ships a customized uboot anyway, tailored to init their specific chips, these changes wouldn't likely be accepted (or even sent) to grub. This would mean grub would be a chainloaded bootloader, thus making for a slower boot.

Yeah, it would present a menu, possibly pretty graphics, and support more file systems. But none of those seems particularly compelling on the typical ARM device.

(It might be that nowadays u-boot can do a menu. I'm not up to the latest info)

[DeepDayze]

Now that's a nice feature list if any. About the only thing I'd wish was added is eltorito support, so that grub2 could boot any arbitrary CD on computers where the bios can't. (SBM doesn't work everywhere, and it would also be nicer if grub could do it natively).

Sounds like a curious omission as well as booting a USB stick on such bios's that can't handle booting from USB, which will be a boon for those with really old (pre 2000) hardware that generally can't boot off CD's and USB sticks.

[Kano]

use plopbt in that case.

[curaga]

Yep, now; but grub > some lesser known sw

It'd just be nice to have a truly Grand Unified Bootloader. Have it installed on the HD, and it able to chainload absolutely anything.

[johnc]

Now that it seems sufficiently mature, this is about the point when somebody comes in and recommends something completely new be written from the ground up.