GRUB 2.0 Moves Closer With GRUB 1.97 Release

While Ubuntu 9.10 is using GRUB2 by default for its boot-loader on new installations, GRUB 2.0 has actually yet to be released even after many years in development. However, on this Sunday afternoon version 2 of GNU GRUB is closer to seeing the light of day. It had been nearly two years since the last GRUB2 release, v1.96, but 1.97 has just been pushed out by its developers.

This free software boot-loader used by nearly all Linux distributions these days as well as other operating systems has seen quite a few changes built up over the past 20 months to put in a more usable, modern-day form. GRUB 1.97 brings password protection support, support for RAID 4/6/10, various new GRUB commands, high-resolution timer support, Cygwin support, x86_64 EFI support, support for loading FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD kernels, and support for EXT4, AFS, and UDF file-systems.

The release announcement for GRUB 1.97 can be found on the GNU grub-devel mailing list while the extensive list of changes can be found in the attached news file.