Grub vs LILO question

[Adams-Blake Co.]

Some distos give you the choice to use either GRUB or LILO on a 2-HD, dual
boot system.

I've been using LILO with MDK 8.2. I have Win on hda and Linux on hdb. LILO
works fine. If I install a new upgrade is there any andvantage going to GRUB?
What exactly is the difference between them from a newbie/user point of view?
Does GRUB give you a nice GUI screen at boot up asking you to choose which OS
you want to use, like LILO does?

Thanks,
Al

[Noah Roberts]

GRUB is a lot nicer if you compile your own kernels. With grub you
don't have to re-run grub every time you do a new kernel. You can add
menu items without having to re-run grub. I preffer the syntax of the
grub menu. Yes, GRUB gives a nice GUI - so does LILO now...you can't
bypass grub's afaict. You can set the wait period to 0 (maybe?) but the
menu still comes up even if the user is not trying to select a
non-default boot. Lilo has been around longer - this means possibly
less bugs but more feature bloat. I haven't noticed any feature bloat
in lilo or bugs in grub.

NR

[Timothy Murphy]

"Adams-Blake Co." <aremovet...@adamsremovethis-blake.com> writes:

>Some distos give you the choice to use either GRUB or LILO on a 2-HD, dual
>boot system.

>I've been using LILO with MDK 8.2. I have Win on hda and Linux on hdb. LILO
>works fine. If I install a new upgrade is there any andvantage going to GRUB?

Grub has two fairly small advantages:

(1) You do not have to re-install grub if you compile a new kernel
(as you have to run lilo after modifying lilo.conf).

(2) You can go into interactive mode with grub if you wish
(and are willing to study "info grub" for some time).

>Does GRUB give you a nice GUI screen at boot up asking you to choose which OS
>you want to use, like LILO does?

Yes.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: t...@maths.tcd.ie
tel: 086-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

[Sundial Services]

Adams-Blake Co. wrote:

Grub is a lot "smarter" in that it has its own mini-shell, knows about a lot
of filesystem formats, and can be configured extensively to boot almost
anything no matter how weird its startup requirements may be. I've had to
deal with a busted system in the past, and Grub's shell facilities enabled
me to take a look and see what was wrong -- and even, fix the problem.

Grub's a lot nicer than Lilo and I expect it to systematically replace Lilo.
But distro-providers will let /you/ choose.

[mjt]

Adams-Blake Co. wrote:

> I've been using LILO with MDK 8.2. I have Win on hda and Linux on hdb.
> LILO works fine. If I install a new upgrade is there any andvantage going
> to GRUB

.... it's [probably] mostly a personal preference. my opinion is that
grub is the better booter mgr. i've used both for quite a while and
find grub less of a hassle, all-around.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael J. Tobler: motorcyclist, surfer, # Black holes result
skydiver, and author: "Inside Linux", # when God divides the
"C++ HowTo", "C++ Unleashed" # universe by zero

[Crd]

I started using GRUB at the time when LILO couldn't manage boot partitions
beyond the 1024th cylinder (roughly 10 GB), while GRUB could.

In my opinion it's much a "fire&forget" tool than LILO: as many others
stated, you don't need to reconfigure it every time you recompile a kernel,
and it boots every OS I know of. for one, my hard disk 0 is presently
living with 3 OS's installed (Win, Linux, FreeBSD) and GRUB works like a
charm.

It's good if your distro lets you choose between the two; still today many
distros don't support GRUB.

I think GRUB is the future for bootloaders.

Corrado