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The Boot Loader Showdown

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."

2 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: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!