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Why Do Most Linux Distributions Use LiLo?
sPaKr asks: "Why do we still use LiLo? I have recently installed FreeBSD, and and the boot loader that comes with latest release seems very powerful: it allows me to navigate the disk, preload kernels and modules at boot time and if I make kernel changes but forget to make changes to the loader configuration file I can still boot into a stable system (even though this can be fixed by having a handy boot disk aka tomsrtbt). I have conducted a quick search and find that there are several replacement loaders for Linux, (ie. grub, uniload). Why is it that most distributions ship with LiLo when we can find stable and more feature-rich replacments?"
I mastered lilo early in my linux-using days. However, recently I looked at grub on my debian-unstable box and found it to be highly superior to lilo.
;)
/dev/hda1 in /boot/vmlinuz)
1) grub can look inside filesystems (much like the freebsd loader you talked about, of which I have no experience with)
2) grub gives you a command line: almost a shell, with tab-completion of filenames and devices, and a featureful list of operations you can perform, many of which I have not learned yet
3) grub has a built in menu system to boot from: it is quite easy to set up a boot menu with grub, even with colors (ooh)
4) grub, as of the last time I checked (recently), could see inside fat, ext2, and ffs. I'm sure support for more is on the way.
5) grub is an official part of the GNU Project.. now we know it can't get better than that!
One of my favorite things to do with grub is make a boot disk with it (directions in the documentation) Thus you can pop a disk in and boot any OS on the computer, boot sector or no..
I wish that Debian would change to grub as the default bootloader. I haven't touched lilo since I started using grub. Mandrake installs grub by default (as of 7.0 I believe.. I only watched a friend installing it). I'm not aware of any other distro using grub.
booting linux using grub:
(at the grub command line, assuming your kernel is on
# kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz
# boot
grub is the way to world peace. All other bootloaders are only mild attempts to be like grub! grub IS THE STANDARD BOOT LOADER! THE STANDARD! (ref. 'ed is the standard text editor')
According to gnu.org, grub is still alpha quality software, not recommended for production systems.
Wasn't RedHat recently raked over the coals for including alpha-quality software in it's distribution? To my mind at least, this isn't much different.
As for the others, I'm gonna check out XOSL ... not that lilo isn't working for me, but I've just gotta play with stuff until it breaks ...
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
I've used XOSL for about a year now and had very good results. I'm currently using it for a quad boot. You can install it to its own partition, or have it stuff its information on a FAT or FAT32 volume.
The site says that XOSL supports BeOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, Linux (with Lilo), Solaris, VxWorks 5.x, Windows 95/98 and Windows NT/2000. So far, I've used it with Win95, Win98SE, WinNT, Win2K, BeOS and Red Hat Linux with no problems.
And don't forget, it is GPLed. Take a look at it when you get a chance. At least check out the screen shots.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
I'm serious.
LiLo executes once every 50 to 180 days for me. It ain't pretty but who cares? It's there, it works and I never have to touch it. It has been in production on some of my systems for nearly three years.
If I was installing a new system and I knew someone who had orgasimed over something other than LiLo, I might look at it. But probably not. LiLo works.
Something that works beats something that is cool nine times out of ten.
InitZero