The Boot Loader Showdown

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.""

Comments

"News"(?!) for nerds. Stuff that matters.

[Jonn Carnnack]

So how does an article posted on the IBM website in August 2005 constitute "news" in January 2006?

Re:Is it really that important?

[ArsenneLupin]

If you are booting your computer more than 3 times a day...

... you won't need any of those funky boot loaders anyway. MS Windows (tm) is quite capable of booting on its own, without needing help from neither grub, nor lilo, nor syslinux.

Either that, or switch to a more stable OS.

Oh, that was indeed what you meant ;-) Guess my joke is redundant then, sorry...