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Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Sunday 09 January 2011, Dale did |
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opine thusly: |
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> Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> > It's trying to be an OS that's a bootloader as it's primary function. |
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> > |
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> > Think back to the days of lilo. It obviously isn't an OS and doesn't |
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> > understand OS concepts - it loads an OS. When that step is done, then and |
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> > only then do OS concepts come into play. lilo doesn't even understand |
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> > how to find a file on a disk, that's why the lilo command had to be run |
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> > to tell the bootloader which sectors on disk it had to shove into |
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> > memory. |
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> > |
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> > This confused people. It annoyed even more people who often forgot to run |
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> > lilo before rebooting. So grub came along, it had the absolute minimum |
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> > of OS-like features to find and load a kernel file. It needed it's own |
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> > syntax of defining drive names, then would make it's way through the |
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> > read-only fs it found there to find the kernel. It supported a small |
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> > number of file systems, just enough so that a 50M partition would be |
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> > usable on almost any platform. |
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> > |
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> > grub2 now looks like GNU/grub (sarcasm intended). It's not a bootloader, |
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> > it's a puny OS with one extra feature - it can bootload! |
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> > |
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> > It has support for jpeg, every fs under the sun, and the grub2 ebuild |
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> > even has a truetype USE flag. |
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> > |
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> > Yes! Now my life is complete. I've been DYING for years to have a |
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> > bootloader that can properly display anti-aliased fonts for the entire 2 |
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> > seconds it's on- screen |
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> |
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> Well, I have to say that for the moment, the old grub is working fine |
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> here. Just like ntp, that may change next week. I just wonder how much |
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> longer it will take before they get it stabilized and expect everyone to |
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> switch to it? From my understanding, they are not doing much with the |
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> old grub now so it should be to far off. |
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> |
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> I don't like to think about the old lilo days. Bad memories. Reminds |
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> me of xorg and hal. o_O |
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At least you didn't have to deal with booting linux off a floppy |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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