On 10 Oct, Jon Teh wrote: > > Waa waa waa. [Insert raised eyebrow] > People would be more likely to be willing to lend assistance to you, > if it wasn't for all the bitching and complaining about supposed > problems in a tool you have used for the first time, and have made some > errors in the configuration of.
I wasn't asking for assistance, Jon. Sorry, perhaps I could have made that clearer. I have used grub off and on, and in fact about a year or two ago asked about it here, to see if my impressions were correct, or whether the problems I had with it were intrinsic. I got many fruitful replies from slug, but everyone who responded agreed that my key problem with it was real (that it doesn't check the configuration you give it, unlike lilo, which does). You may call that bashing grub, but I think it's a fair comment. I also chose to state that in a reasonably forthright way, thinking that if I were wrong, a staunch grub defender might enjoy pointing out my error. (And I would indeed be grateful to learn of a reliability check mode.) > Everyone makes mistakes, especially if it's the first time they've used > something. Looking at ways to resolve the problem is much more likely > to reap positive results than bashing the tool. As I said, I wasn't asking for someone to fix my (self-induced, if grub-assisted) grub problem. Nor is it my first use of grub. But without knowing all the ins and outs of the cryptic grub command syntax, and hidden syntax (such as Tab-completion), it's generally easier to boot up off a rescue media and fix the problem outside grub. > Lilo and Grub each have their own pluses and minuses, so while it may > take a bit of getting used to Grub's syntax, it tends to be a bit > better at actually making operating systems, especially non-standard ones, > boot. Grub also has a nice console that you can try syntax on at > boot time. Yes, but the learning curve is steep. There are useful hidden features, such as the null command to effectively do a kind of "ls", but these facilities are buried away. I do agree it's more powerful and functional than lilo, though. To a power user, they'd be able to work wonders and recover from problems with insouciant ease. > You are correct in saying that Grub does not require the BIOS to read > drives, well, at least in the way I think you mean it. Thanks for that info, it means it's worthwhile persevering. > Also, what is so hard with the Debian text installer? I'm not sure which > screen it is you're having a biff with, but I have a feeling that it's not > a very critical screen in any case. It presented me with a text console for configuring all the kernel modules as part of the installation process! To go through each one would have required a couple of hours. There was no suggestion about just accepting a default option - maybe I should have? But Ubuntu and Kubuntu are debian based, so I'm not sure there's much value in trying a vanilla Debian install. If they don't care about usability in the installation process, the attitude probably carries through to other areas. They still use dselect, for example, don't they? And the text install mode seemed a bit behind the times too. Traditionally, Unix has been weak in valuing attention to usability, so perhaps that just means they're more traditional Unix people. :-) luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
