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The Boot Loader Showdown

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-that-never-became-a-holy-war-i'll-never-know dept.

An anonymous reader 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.""

3 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Other lesser known boot loaders... by ylikone · · Score: 5, Informative
    XOSL (graphical)

    GAG (graphical)

    Gujin

    Syslinux

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    Meh.
  2. Re:GRUB! by Lussarn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try enable "USB Legacy support" or similiar in BIOS. Has helped me every time.

  3. How to program a bootstrap loader by uriah923 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article explains how to write your own boot sector. The tutorial includes assembly language code to demonstrate loading and executing a binary image from a FAT filesystem. It's also an interesting read if you want to understand the fundamentals of the X86 boot process.

    --
    -Brandon "How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?"