Submitted 31-May-00 by David Talbot:
| Ok, grub is technically very inferior to LILO,
Umm . . . What gives you that impression? It requires a bit more
thinking to implement (from scratch), but is far more extensible
| but I love the grub ANSI
| boot chooser thingey. How bout a bootdrake that is a graphical bootloader
| that is even mouse operated.
|
| A screen comes up with the cute magical mandrake penguin and a list of
| bootables to the right. I click on the one I want to boot. If I choose any
| non-linux kernel, the screen goes away and boots to that OS.
|
| If I choose a linux kernel, that kernel selection box expands to take up
| most of the screen (minus the magical penguin of course) to proceed with
| the boot process. A "boot progress bar" that estimates how much time
| remains in the boot process (including detecting hardware ect ect).
|
| This would make a cool front end to LILO that would really add to the WOW
| factor of the OS.
|
| Have it come in a few settings:
| 1) Toggled off (normal LILO style boot)
| 2) Toggled on expert (as described above)
| 3) Novice fully graphical, no "boot window" just the progress bar.
Caldera uses something a bit simpler. No mouse, fancy animation, or
``prograss bar,'' but the problem really boils down to space. There
is a very tiny amount of space available for a boot loader.
Thus, anything ``extra'' like grub's ANSI or a custom LILO boot
message must be placed in a file that will not be moved. Even editing
it requires that the appropriate bnoot loader be reinstalled so that
its internal map of what is where still points to the file.
The only mouse operated (*shudder*) boot loaders I can think of
require that they be set up in a tiny partition of their own (set as a
primary bootable). Not terribly convenient for people running
multiple OS's that must have primary partitions.
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( ) * Anton Graham
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