GRUB 2.02 Has Many Features, Might Hit Ubuntu 14.04

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GRUB 2.02 Has Many Features, Might Hit Ubuntu 14.04

Development of GRUB 2.02 has been going well for well over one year and at least some Canonical developers are hoping to land the Free Software Foundation's updated boot-loader into Ubuntu 14.04 LTS even if it means using a development version for the time being...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU3NDk

[mark45]

Is grub2 bloated or is it a myth?

[Kano]

Grub is like a mini os, it has filesystem drivers like the Linux kernel and lots of other features. Interestingly when you use UEFI you can use much simpler bootloaders (or even none) as long as you store the kernel (+initrd if needed) into the efi fat partition. If you don't like that you of course need bootloaders which can access the filesystem to load the kernel or whatever. The grub config files support a scripting language similar to shell scripts, you can dynamically create menu entries, very interesting features...

[dragonn]

I moved some time ago to syslinux - much simpler - just KISS, like the grub 1.

[johnc]

needs moar f2fs

[Ericg]

Is grub2 bloated or is it a myth?

I won't say its bloated, but it is definitely complex and convoluted compared to Grub1 or syslinux

[Grogan]

I used to really hate Grub2, but I've learned to just make sure the grub autoconfig never happens (e.g. don't install kernel updates from distro repos... I always build my own anyway) and just stick to manual edits. I usually have to manually correct things anyway when grub-mkconfig gets run.

I've recently installed Mint on /dev/sda (where an old Gentoo install used to be) for a good distro to play with Steam. I was planning on installing LILO to fix that (which I prefer because it's simple, filesystem agnostic and has no choice but to work AND I'm stubborn) but I decided not to fight it. Really Grub is better for me anyway, because when I do a new kernel in my Slackware setup I don't have to reboot to the other OS or chroot to run the lilo command. I only need to change a few characters in grub.cfg.

I don't like change.

[johnc]

One of the interesting issues with GRUB is that if you boot into Windows (from GRUB) you can't run the Windows Backup program.

[Ferdinand]

I've recently installed Mint on /dev/sda (where an old Gentoo install used to be) for a good distro to play with Steam.

How is steam on linux? Good experience?

[schmidtbag]

hmm the uboot functionality intrigues me, but I'm not entirely sure how that works. Does that mean you need a uEnv to boot to grub, or, are you able to completely place grub over uboot? Because I would love to get rid of uboot - it is so poorly documented and inconsistent.

ARM in general needs a serious overhaul in the booting department. It's an inconvenient mess.