What features/changes would you like to see in future Slackware?
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I'd like to see either a selection during the setup to install LILO -or- GRUB, or a switch to GRUB (not necessarily yet, but when the next major version comes out stable). I know many (Slackware/non-Slackware) users love LILO for some bizarre reasons, but if there is KDE included, I see no real reason to not include GRUB. If it's for working, rude-looking, tight software, then KDE shouldn't be there - or if it's for good-looking, easy-to-use software too, why make bootloader such a pain in the garden? LILO works well in 2 cases out of 10 in my case, so..
Updated software is always welcome, and I'd maybe like to see more/broader selection of the various small window managers, something new in addition to the ones that already come with Slackware. Maybe drop KDE off and fill the space with different window managers? Maybe not.
Most of all I'd like to see "good", stable software that is as up to date as possible without it being too unstable. Nothing is as stable as a rock, but Slackware does it pretty well..
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I'd like to see either a selection during the setup to install LILO -or- GRUB, or a switch to GRUB (not necessarily yet, but when the next major version comes out stable).
I second that request. I prefer GRUB, it has many more features and is in general much easier to recover from booting problems if you have it installed. If you messed up in your config, just tell it what to boot via the GLUB CLI and it will boot it without problems.
Grub is available in the /extra directory. Here's a question because I haven't done this yet: is it particularly difficult during the installation to not install LILO and then later install GRUB from /extra?
You can't not install lilo ... that's the problem. If you don't install lilo, you won't be able to boot into Slackware. (Now, of course, if you are dual boot something that already installed grub or lilo, then you just need to add Slackware to that config and boot that way, but if you are single booting then you MUST install lilo)
I know that from slackware view, the problem is just that grub is too young and doesn't fit in the "tried and true", but, it's something that should be presented as matter of choice, like any other package, so...you don't want KDE in your slackware? don't install it, like wise, you don't want LILO for whatever reason? don't install it, you can use grub if you like...
You can't not install lilo ... that's the problem. If you don't install lilo, you won't be able to boot into Slackware. (Now, of course, if you are dual boot something that already installed grub or lilo, then you just need to add Slackware to that config and boot that way, but if you are single booting then you MUST install lilo)
Not that I have ever tried, but certainly you should be able to install the GRUB package to the mounted installation, and then manually configure/install it?
If you do it before rebooting the install CD, it doesn't matter that LILO is installed because GRUB will blow it out of the MBR once you set it up.
Not that I don't agree it should be an option in the installer.
I doubt that grub is 'too young' for Slackware. I suspect that the problem is that nobody has come up with a really accurate and dependable installer to use with Slackware. I have done some work on such an installer, but I have lots of little projects (and a couple of big ones) so progress is slow. GRUB is a little trickier to install than lilo and having to 'translate' the hard drive and partition names makes it more complex. I think the new changes in the kernel will make it a little easier -I mean that the kernel now calls all hard drives sd? instead of hd? and sd?. The grubconfig script that comes with the Slackware grub package has never worked for me -even for simple setups, much less for more complex setups which have /boot on a separated partition. I guess PatV has gotten it to work for him before, but I remember him mentioning that it failed to find some EIDE drives. Unforunately the new GRUB2 is still not really complete. I do use grub myself though -a highly patched version that will boot nearly anything from anywhere -windows over the network, windows from a floppy drive or sets up partition images as virtual drives. I have also put together a version with just a few patches which might be acceptable for inclusion in Slackware -there have been a few patches in CVS after the release of 0.97. The version I *use* has bootsplash, ntfs support and adjustable window frames size plus lots of other cool goodies. Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on the installer some more soon.
GRUB is a little trickier to install than lilo and having to 'translate' the hard drive and partition names makes it more complex.
Yes, this is a major pain for me. :-(
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I think the new changes in the kernel will make it a little easier -I mean that the kernel now calls all hard drives sd? instead of hd? and sd?.
I really don't understand this change. How does hard drive get abbreviated down to sd? Anyway, I thought that "SD" referred to secure digital cards and (by extension) other kinds of flash memory drives.
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The grubconfig script that comes with the Slackware grub package has never worked for me -even for simple setups, much less for more complex setups which have /boot on a separated partition. I guess PatV has gotten it to work for him before, but I remember him mentioning that it failed to find some EIDE drives.
That would be a problem with older hardware. Maybe that's why Pat has kept LILO as the default.
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I do use grub myself though -a highly patched version that will boot nearly anything from anywhere -windows over the network, windows from a floppy drive or sets up partition images as virtual drives.
That sounds pretty cool. I wonder if it's possible to set up Grub to boot from an external hard drive that used to be internal.
[...]
I really don't understand this change. How does hard drive get abbreviated down to sd? Anyway, I thought that "SD" referred to secure digital cards and (by extension) other kinds of flash memory drives.[...]
sd refers to SCSI disks, and has been co-opted for SATA and USB disks as well.
hd refers to IDE/ATA disks.
I was reading something the other day that seemed to indicate that the latest versions of the kernel now call all hd? devices as sd? . This should make the naming scheme simpler. However, I don't know that this will solve all the problems. In the past GRUB hasn't always recognized hard disks in the same order as the BIOS -especially when you had a system with both SATA and IDE drives. I'm not sure, but the new naming scheme may help in this regard. I haven't checked lately on the progress og GRUB2, but I suspect that they'll be addressing these problems there. Trouble is that GRUB2 development is nearly as slow as the HURD kernel and the developers are not doing any active work on GRUB legacy.
As to this: "boot from an external hard drive that used to be internal" -GRUB, lilo or syslinux can only boot from a drive which is bootable from the BIOS. If the BIOS can be set to boot from your external drive, then GRUB can boot from there. If not, then you are usually out of luck. I have larger hard drives which are not recognized by the BIOS of my older machine. I keep a small hard drive hooked up as the primary drive and install grun there and it is also has my /boot partition. This lets me boot whichever kernel I need and then the kernel can recognize the larger hard drives. This illustrates a part of the problem with grub not seeing things the same way as the BIOS. These drives are absolutely not seen by the BIOS, yet when I run the grub executable(not the boot loader) under Linux it sees these drives because the linux kernel sees them. So if I trusted grub to create a boot entry for these drives it would not work because grub(the bootloader) does *not* see them.
That was my understanding as well, only true SCSI disks were going to be using the sdX naming scheme, and everything else would be hdX.
Renaming IDE devices wouldn't make any sense.
This is not what I've read. In my understanding every harddrive (indepenent of type) will be sdX, and cd/dvdroms will be srN. And this is they way it is on my laptop. On my laptop I run zenwalk and my pata harddisk is /dev/sda and cdrom is /dev/sr0. This is also used in fedora and openSUSE i believe. I can't verify this thoe.
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