Quoting Didier Kryn ([email protected]): > For non-standard things I would use SYSLINUX, but for laptops > and servers I don't want to spend time on hacking the bootloader > config when the distro is able to automatically install and > configure a default bootloader which just works, which has been the > case of Grub2 for years.
Here's the thing: I'm done with relying on Linux distributions' default choices, because the results have been generally bad. (I'm a longtime Debian user, since 2.1 Slink.) Distro defaults produced a default to GNOME, which required an annoying bit of detective work to get rid of, on my desktop systems over the years if I'd been unattentive enough to accept defaults during installation. (Quickest way: Disable /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager, then apt-get install one's preferred window manager, and set it as default using update-alternatives . Later you can apt-get --purge remove all the GNOME junk you don't want.) Distro defaults gave me Apache httpd rather than sparser choices like lighttpd and nginx. Distro defaults threw away my longtime preference in bootloader (lilo) and substituted GRUB without asking me. Distro defaults accepted dependency hairballs of Freedesktop.org software that piled junk like D-Bus, upower, udisks2, packagekit, PolKit, udev, and systemd. It annoys me that my systems are running GRUB 0.9x when I never asked for it in the first place, because some release manager decided it should replace lilo without asking my opinion. It annoys me that, if I have a boot problem, I'll be facing a GRUB> prompt with a totally alien command syntax and a gratuitously different device-naming scheme, and probably have to use a second computer to figure out how to reconfigure the thing -- where the advantage of lilo was _specifically_ that you _didn't_ need to hack its config. You just made sure you had a 'fallback' stanza in it that you left alone in order to easily recover from any problem. For you, you see Grub2 as better because it Just Works and arrives by default. I'm much older at this, and to my perspective lilo is what Just Worked and arrived by default -- until some idiot DD decided to throw it away without asking my leave to take it. And, basically, the hell with distribution default package choices. They've lead to much badness, and I'm done with conceding choice of software to default package selection. That doesn't mean I _necessarily_ want to go back to lilo merely out of nostalgia. I might, or I might opt for something more modern like extlinux. It depends in part, of course, on hardware constraints. My point is that my new-ish policy is to never merely accept the judgement implicit in automatic package selection, and to make mindful choices: Unbound/NSD instead of BIND9, nginx or Lighttpd instead of Apache2, lilo or extlinux instead of GRUB 0.9x or GRUB2, s6 or a small PID1 and OpenRC instead of other init systems, and no D-Bus, upower, udisks2, packagekit, PolKit, udev, and systemd on my system if I can manage it. Because it's _my_ system. Distribution default choices can go take a walk. > But I understand perfectly others can make different choices, > and I support the idea of keeping multiple options available. I seriously don't even understand why anyone would think the latter was up for debate. Multiple options _are_ available. And they are going to keep on being available. Does anyone here think the discussion was over whether multiple options would be available? When did someone say 'I think we should rearrange reality somehow so multiple options are not available'? That doesn't describe the Linux universe I've been living in since 1993, sir. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list [email protected] https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
