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The Boot Loader Showdown

Posted by Zonk on from the xtc-vs-adam-ant dept.

Francesca writes "What utility do practically all Linux users use, regardless of their job or expertise? A boot loader. In this article from IBM, see how a boot loader works, meet two popular loaders -- LILO (LInux LOader) and GNU GRUB (GRand Unified Boot loader) -- and review the pros and cons of each." From the article: "Most simply, a boot loader loads the operating system. When your machine loads its operating system, the BIOS reads the first 512 bytes of your bootable media (which is known as the master boot record, or MBR). You can store the boot record of only one operating system in a single MBR, so a problem becomes apparent when you require multiple operating systems. Hence the need for more flexible boot loaders."

5 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. Something is wrong with the article. by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Funny

    I logged in as root and got:
    [root@localhost root]#

    Then I typed:
    # /sbin/lilo -v -v

    And nothing happened... The entire line looked like:

    root@localhost root]# # /sbin/lilo -v -v

    What is wrong here? ;-)

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  2. Re:Lilo...pros? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    The anonymous coward wrote:
    There are pros to Lilo? It's such a heap of crap. The only reason it's still used is because people were brought up on it.

    I don't think it's actually all that bad. It's been successful enough to generate a soon to be released followup: Stitch Has A Glitch.
  3. Re:WHAT THE FUCK, SLASHDOT? by oaklybonn · · Score: 1, Funny

    Murder? Is this more intelligent design bullshit?

  4. Re:Why couldn't they post this BEFORE the weekend? by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 2, Funny

    The software sounds good, but it seems that la reproducción total o parcial is prohibida -- at least sin autorización del autor. And I don't speak enough Spanish to get the autor's autorizacion to reproduccion it.

    Yo quiero Taco ^G!

  5. Boot loaders illustrate a common problem nicely. by hackwrench · · Score: 1, Funny

    There's no need to be looking around for an OS to load. The current OS should be incontrovertably the OS to load. Want to load another OS? Copy its boot process over the current one. In the same vein, programs shouldn't be looking around for settings, for they can be quickly recompiled in.