> My comments about grub still stand. It's great for booting > Linux kernels, which it was designed for, and it is okay for > chainloading to get to Plan 9. I still think Smart Boot Manager > is far and away the best PC multi-OS booter out there. It looks > at the partitions and says "here is what I found: pick one." > No manual config. In grub you have to boot to Linux to tell it > about a new Plan 9 partition. Grub is really a Linux loader > disguised as a multiboot loader. In that situation it works great. > Beyond that it's just a pain.
Actually, it was meant for GNU Hurd as it loads microkernels and modules containing drivers and other bits of a "system" into separate address spaces. GRUB2 works on PPC platforms as well now for the same effect. [the solution for L4 based systems was to build a monolithic "piggybacked" image to achieve the multiboot effect] I agree chainloader is a bit of a pain in the ass. Grub has filesystem modules and ways to do things like set VESA modes before you boot an OS [used with House for example... written in Haskell using the GHC runtime as OS services, yes ethernet drivers written in Haskell.] grub is also capable of adding netboot capabilities to old PCs that didn't have the BIOS for it. I used to boot an old P2 with a grub floppy to netboot OSes on it because it had no hard disk. Grub has a lot of value to me as a result for some of these projects. I've not seen another loader come along that can provide me with that level of configuration [besides perhaps OpenFirmware on my mac.... even that needs Grub2 to do multiboot stuff though] > > Finally, do not believe even for a moment that Plan 9 thinks > that all the world's a 386. We have always had a couple other > architectures running, and running well. That's still true today. > On the other hand, if you're writing a pc kernel, you're going > to have to do some pc-specific things. I just wish BIOS would die a quick painful death and we can move on to something else. OpenFirmware would have been my preference but EFI appears to be the way for PCs. > > Russ > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > > If I can find the irc logs I'll post them for context, but I don't think > any of us said anything very useful. > > uriel >
