On 02/14/2012 02:29 PM, Andrea Conti wrote:
> Re grub2: as long as grub0 works, I really don't care if grub2 is
> better, cleaner, shinier, more modern or anything else.
> 
> I don't need a freakin' whole OS to boot linux, and having a
> configuration that is so convoluted that it *has to* be generated by
> running a set of scripts makes no sense at all. I thought the days of m4
> and sendmail.cf were over a long time ago...

Well, it's a good thing that GRUB 2 is just a bootloader, then.  :-)
And again, nobody needs the tools to configure it; they are simply
standardized from what various distributions developed for GRUB Legacy,
but was incompatible from one distribution to the next.

> I am sure grub2 can be made to work, but for a piece of software as
> vital as a boot loader, that level of complexity in my opinion is
> totally unreasonable and impossible to justify.

How about "It Just Works".  Seriously.

It is a better designed system with most of its functionality pushed
into modules.  It is portable to more than just x86, as I've already
mentioned before, and during _that_ whole process, the quality of the
code increased significantly.  It is more robust, and from the POV of a
user, maintainer, or packager it is *much* simpler.

When supporting GRUB Legacy, it's almost a necessity to know which
distribution the user installed it with.  Why?  Because all of them are
different!  That is no longer the case with GRUB 2.

I'm not sure how that translates to being more complex.  If you are
averse to change, just say so and be done with it.  Is it different?
Oh, yes, absolutely.  It couldn't be better if it were the same, could
it?  ;-)

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”