[NTLUG:Discuss] lilo vs grub

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 04:22, Ralph Green, Jr wrote:
> Howdy,
>   It had looked like distros were all moving from lilo to grub in the
> last year or two.  Lately, it seems to be going back the other way.  I
> installed SuSE 9.1 two weeks ago on a laptop and Mandrake 10.1 on a
> desktop tonight.  They both installed lilo as the default bootloader. 
> Is there some reason that lilo is making a comeback?
>   At the last meeting, I talked with someone in the LIP room and he said
> SuSE had installed grub for him.  So, there must be some characteristic
> of my system that made SuSE choose lilo.  It works fine.  I am just
> curious about what is going on and I have not found any useful
> references online.
> Good day,
> Ralph

LILO is a "dumb" boot-loader.  It simply loads a "raw" sector address --
typically this is a specific logical block address (LBA).  LILO needs
not know anything about the underlying disk format.  Of course, if LILO
is not configured correctly at the time it is "installed," or something
in the system changes since it was last installed, there is no way to
recover other than to use another boot device (e.g., floppy, CD,
etc...).

GRUB is an "intelligent" boot-loader.  It can dynamically change its
configuration, as it can read different disk labels (partition tables),
its slices (partitions / filesystems in partitions), etc...  It can also
provide a way to interactively edit the configuration at boot-time,
which allows the user to fix something that was either not configured
correctly, or something changes in the system since it was last
configured.

GRUB is more flexible, but drivers have to be written for different disk
labels, filesystems, etc...  LILO works with just about any disk label,
filesystem, etc...  Each has their respective advantages/disadvantages. 
But typically, given development effort, GRUB can support just about
anything.  When support has not been developed, then LILO is typically
used.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith at ieee.org 
------------------------------------------------------------------ 
"Communities don't have rights. Only individuals in the community
 have rights. ... That idea of community rights is firmly rooted
 in the 'Communist Manifesto.'" -- Michael Badnarik