Well... after going through the process of recompiling a kernel, what's the big deal of typing "/sbin/lilo" at the end of it? That's splitting hairs. Since I have to go through extra steps regardless of which loader it is, due to my preserving the old stuff, this point doesn't make an impact to me.

hmm... it may be b/c I had grub installed on my machine first... dunno.

I prefer grub. Easier to configure and far more flexible. A few simple edits in the config file and you're good to go.

I enjoyed Grub for the 5 or 6 days I had Suse installed on my main machine.. Suse on the other hand. =/

With Slack, I use lilo. I've had a few issues with it but things have been sorted out, and I understand it now. I like it's simplicity, and typing "lilo" <enter> after editing /etc/lilo.conf isn't really that big of a deal to me. I have no problems dual-booting Windows XP pro and Slack 10.1 using Lilo.

~Dav

I use grub becuase it doesn't require you to keep writing to the mbr everytime you want to change something. I also like the mini command line it provides so you can boot absolutely anything anywhere on the fly. It even provides the cat utility so you can view files without booting your OS!

I have no idea what people are talking about when they say it is less stable then lilo. I've been using in for years and have booted everything imaginable with it and never had a single problem.

To add to the lilio is a boot loader.

Grub is more like a micro OS and therefore can do a lot more!

I voted lilo. It has that spartan feel to it that I like so much. I use GRUB at work on a few SuSE servers, and I don't like how it has a nice background and a progress bar and an option to change resolutions etc. Who needs that anyway? I don't mind if it's ugly and low-res, I just want a list of images. I pick one and the bootloader boots it.

This poll might have been more revealing if it had the options:

Started with Lilo, prefer Lilo
Started with Lilo, prefer Grub
Started with Grub, prefer Lilo
Started with Grub, prefer Grub

Maybe next time, eh?

It may be easier to get out of config problems with grub, but I find it's a lot harder to get *into* them with lilo. Just watch the output when you run "lilo". Or if you're not sure that your changes are going to work, run "lilo -v -t" before running lilo. It'll load the config file, and pretend to write the boot sector without actually doing it.

I don't like grub, because I *want* it to be a multi-step process to update the boot loader. If it isn't a multi-step process, it's far too easy to bork it. And I freely admit that I'm not perfect. I may claim to know every in and out of lilo, but I still make typos from time to time, and there *are* still some config options that I don't understand fully, because I've never used them. I consider it to be a great advantage that you have to run lilo before it's updated, because it forces to watch the output and make sure that it's going to work.

Besides, if I want a GUI in LILO, I'll just use the bitmap option in lilo.conf. I'm content with plain text.

Since we are talking about lilo and grub I have a question.
If i have 2 OS and I want to hide the existence of one of the OS at boot.
Let's say that I boot by default in Slackware and I want to hide the other OS from the boot menu (or better to hide the whole boot menu) until I press a certain key.
What boot loader I shoul use and how?

Sorry if that was off topic .
I am using LILO.

Thanks!

Grub has a command for that : hiddenmenu
from info grub

Grub for me, at least I don't have to type /sbin/lilo everytime a kernel is upgraded which is good when running multiple distros.

I started with lilo but grub is better, because it's more flexible. If you do an error with lilo and your installed distro is unbootable, you have to access the partitions to fix it, using a slack's cd or a live-cd. With grub you can do that on-the-fly.
You can also add/remove kernel parameters, before you boot, like putting a 1 in the end of the kernel line and linux will boot in "init 1", ignoring inittab's configuration.
It's also better for booting multiple linux distros. You can add another distro in the menu, without having to mount the linux partition, that contains the kernel/initrd.

Grub of course.

During the days I used LILO, I couldn't boot on a system where the Linux partition was installed > 1024 cylinder limit of the hard disk. With grub I was able to boot it.

Since then, I've not looked back. Grub all the way.

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During the days I used LILO, I couldn't boot on a system where the Linux partition was installed > 1024 cylinder limit of the hard disk.
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is that still valid ?
if so, there's a good reason to checkout grub.
( my hd has 19000+ cilinders )

egag