LILO Boot-Loader Development To Cease At End Of Year

[Kano]

GRUB 2 has loopback support, which means you can access the iso9660 filesystem from an iso image and use the kernel+initrd from there. It does not automatically detect the options you need, thats what you have do add yourself - and the live system needs itself loopback support. You can not generally say that you can boot any iso from GRUB 2 - it won't work for Windows. Gummiboot (or systemd-boot) can only access files from the EFI filesystem on the same hd - you can not even change to another fs (if you know EFI shell). Also if you want to have got a "selection" of kernels this partition needs to be fairly huge - about 25 mb for 1 kernel+initrd compared to 120 kb for GRUB 2 (gummiboot itself was 87 kb). I don't know what you want to say with "simple" - it is an EFI bootloader - Linux only starts because of the direct EFI support in the kernel.

[uid313]

I never knew that GRUB2 could boot ISO images.

The Windows boot loader can boot VHD (virtual hard disk) images using Hyper-V.

[Gusar]

UEFI boot with LILO is impossible as well

There's ELILO. However, development of that stopped last year already.

So yeah, it's over for LILO. It's been fun. Especially when it once loaded a kernel that wasn't even on the disk anymore! Ok, it was - I deleted it, but it was still physically on the disk. And since LILO accesses data blocks directly instead of using the filesystem, it could still load the kernel. Was quite the WTF moment, I tell you

[milkylainen]

GRUB is a monstrosity. I still prefer relying on blocklists over file-system access. Slackware btw.
However, legacy mode is going the way of extinction. So in a way it is reasonable to expect this to happen.

[jacob]

Ever since the grub2 configuration got stupid.. I prefer syslinux (extlinux specifically but... the whole lot is pretty nice, handy and flexible).

I agree that grub2 is pretty awful, although Ubuntu does a decent job of making it usable. Still, grub2 has support for btrfs (i.e. no need to have /boot on a separate partition), which is very useful. I don't know if any of the other boot loaders out there has that.

[chithanh]

Syslinux supports booting from btrfs.
Also note that on UEFI systems, there is little reason to use a separate /boot partition any more.

Akin to the old Emacs joke, "GRUB2 is a great operating system - it lacks a good boot loader, though"

[DeepDayze]

there is nothing hard with grub2 and it allows you to boot iso from file for install or livecd test. systemd-boot is probably ok for simple uses

I liked the legacy GRUB for the single simple main config file (menu.lst) and I'd wish GRUB2 kept it that way rather having to change several files to configure GRUB2. If GRUB2 could go back to a simpler configuration yet be modular to add/remove support for whatever devices as well as making it easy to configure for UEFI then I'd go with GRUB(2).

I would not miss LILO as it is a PITA to manage.

[Kano]

Also note that on UEFI systems, there is little reason to use a separate /boot partition any more.

Basically the EFI (FAT32) partition serves exactly that purpose but can be shared across multiply installs of different OS. If you want to use the gummiboot/systemd-boot it is even recommended to mount this partition to /boot as the kernel/initrds are stored there - I am no huge friend of that approach but it is possible to store these files only once this way. If you use /boot/efi then you have to copy it over. GRUB2 does not need this.

[cb88]

I agree that grub2 is pretty awful, although Ubuntu does a decent job of making it usable. Still, grub2 has support for btrfs (i.e. no need to have /boot on a separate partition), which is very useful. I don't know if any of the other boot loaders out there has that.

Syslinux supports booting from uncompressed BTRFS already... grub2 used to not support it but I think it does now but as you know I wouldn't have tested that feature

[jacob]

Syslinux supports booting from uncompressed BTRFS already... grub2 used to not support it but I think it does now but as you know I wouldn't have tested that feature

As of now grub2 boots from compressed btrfs just fine, incl. with raid0. Good to know about syslinux.