XOSL, an alternative to Lilo and Grub

WhyPanic writes "XOSL, the Extended Operating System Loader, is a free (as in beer and as in GPL), full featured, graphical boot loader that can work in conjunction with Lilo or separately to boot all varieties of Windows, Linux, and many other OS's." Nifty looking.

Comments

Some crossed wires here

[fobbman]

This isn't a new development, so did Slashdot and Freshmeat somehow swap queues? Should I be checking Freshmeat for Katz submissions?

But you still need Lilo...

[sultanoslack]

XOSL won't load your kernel. You still need a Linux boot loader to do that. So, no, XOSL isn't an alternative to Lilo and Grub. I tried it a long time ago hoping to oust Lilo.

Thier website still says:
XOSL is known to support
[...]
Linux (with Lilo)

Appears to need Lilo

[SiliconJesus]

According to the page...
XOSL is known to support

• BeOS
• MS-DOS
• FreeDOS
• Linux (with Lilo)
• Solaris
• VxWorks 5.x
• Windows 95/98/Me
• Windows NT/2000
• ...and others...

I read that as meaning it just boots up lilo, it still needs it to run Linux. Presumably, you'd install lilo on the partition, instead of the MBR.

Re:Appears to need Lilo

[zaius]

Correct. It doesn't replace LILO, but sits above it in the booting hierarchy.

I stumbled across it while trying to put NT (not my decision) onto a machine that had previously had Linux and LILO on it. For some reason, NT wouldn't install it's bootloader over LILO, and LILO wouldn't boot to NT, because I couldn't configure it because Linux was no longer on the machine. So I installed XOSL, and everything worked.

Re:Wishlist...

[jandrese]

Um, Xosl is configurable from the boot screen (IIRC, it's been a year since I used it last).
Lets see what I can remember about this.

1. It is very nice looking, and even has optional fading effets
2. It is easy to install
3. It comes with a partition manager (Ranish Partition Manager)
4. It's quite configurable, you can do pretty much anything with it that you can do with any other first stage boot loader
5. It requires a FAT parition on your hard drive. This is bad for people who want to dual boot between Linux/FreeBSD and Win2k, and doubly bad if your FAT partition gets corrupted.
6. It tends to mark things "unavailable" if they disappear temporarily and never brings them back (you have to delete and recreate the partition). This was a big annoyance when I had a flaky SCSI card.
7. Ranish Parition Manager is not exactly pretty or easy to use
8. It's not so good for systems with fixed frequncy monitors, fortunatly this isn't a big deal anymore, but I used to have a 1280x1024 ONLY monitor attached to my system (not even a text mode) and my video card's best VESA mode was 800x600.
9. Despite what the docs say, you pretty much need a mouse to use it. I was never able to get the keyboard shortcuts working correctly for the configuration screens.

That's pretty much all I remember about it... I hope that gives you and idea of what Xosl is like.

Yes, it needs LILO

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

from their FAQ:

"Installing GNU/Linux

If you're installing Linux, install LILO in the Linux partition's boot sector (superblock). You can safely ignore the warning that says you won't be able to boot Linux. XOSL can do the job."

this mean the hassle of running lilo everytime you recompile the kernel still exists with XOSL.

I rather use grub. don't need to rerun it every new kernel and it allows me to edit entries in the menu during boot...

Not new at all.

[booch]

There hasn't even been a new version released since December 2000. (Which happens to be when I looked at it and realized how cool it is.) Not only is this the wrong kind of news for Slashdot, it's not even news.

What about my usb mouse?!?

[blonde rser]

I was already to give XOSL a test spin when I noticed it doesn't support usb mouses. That's when it occured to me that I don't really want a boot loader that needs its own set up device drivers.

Flamebait.... Windows can boot multiple OSes fine

[devphil]

If there's only a single OS listed in boot.ini, then no boot menu is given. (What would be the point?) The bootloader just boots it without prompting.

By default, Windows is the only one it lists. (No surprise there.) I copied my Linux bootsector to BOOTSECT.LNX, added another line to boot.ini, and then I had a choice at boot time: Windows 2000, or Linux. To do all this I followed the mini-HOWTO at linuxdoc.org; that HOWTO is now several years old, I believe. It was originally written for NT 4.something.

Your article is complete uninformed flamebait.

Re:Different?

[DickBreath]

How is [XOSL on own partition] different from installing a mini-linux distro on its own partition, and then doing some smart booting from there?

Because at the present time, XOSL is still limited by the fact that it doesn't yet have:

• Device drivers for good 3D support on suitable hardware
• Good themes with animation and translucency
• Good screensavers
• A good web browser
• An office suite and productivity software