So LILO is dead?

wagscat123 · 02-13-2016, 09:24 AM

Hi all,

I read a while back that the LILO maintainers were going to stop in December, 2015 due to many features LILO is missing. Are any developers thinking of picking it up, and if not, what does this mean for luddites and distros like Slackware that still use LILO?

Timothy Miller · 02-13-2016, 09:32 AM

Oh wow, I just looked it up, appears it has. Surprised I never saw those announcements before...

wagscat123 · 02-13-2016, 11:59 AM

I think I first found out in a DistroWatch weekly news report last fall

ondoho · 02-13-2016, 12:35 PM

a month ago that same page still showed the lates news/updates (i.e. november last year), but already then i had the feeling it's been an almost-one-person project for quite a while.

jpollard · 02-13-2016, 01:02 PM

Slackware documentation appears to be moving to grub/grub2

orbea · 02-13-2016, 02:17 PM

Lilo is still maintained in Slackware.

Quote:

Originally Posted by volkerdi

I fail to see why anyone is concerned about this. OEMs aren't making any more non-UEFI machines, and I suspect LILO will continue to work for the existing BIOS ones without much (or even any) ongoing maintenance. There have been several fairly long periods of time where there weren't any new LILO versions and it continued to "just work", as you say. Plus, the last official release was just a couple of weeks ago! I don't consider code to be dead simply because a maintainer (not even the original one) is warning that they're going to quit working on it. But maybe I'm more pragmatic... I also don't consider a project to have started when there's just a manifesto and no code (even if it's coming soon!)

Since LILO is not going to need any work (and I won't just ticker with it for no good reason), I volunteer to take over. Consider it maintained.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...7/#post5459873

jefro · 02-13-2016, 10:18 PM

It was dead a few times wasn't it?

allend · 02-14-2016, 02:39 PM

Venerable LILO is still being used to boot BIOS based hardware by this luddite and Slackware user.
As BIOS based hardware is replaced by UEFI based hardware, then LILO will be replaced by an alternative UEFI aware boot loader.

astrogeek · 02-14-2016, 03:03 PM

LILO is still king of the hill here!

It was never dead, it just reached a state of relative perfection and simplicity for its intended purpose that required minimal continuing maintenance and gave it excellent immunity to feature creep.

Stability without incessant development activity is a feature, too!

sundialsvcs · 02-14-2016, 07:10 PM

While LILO (and "grub-1") will of course continue to be used, "time marches on." It is very easy to replace LILO with a boot-loader that is very considerably easier to maintain and update ... a consideration that is especially important when you've got gobs of servers.

wagscat123 · 02-14-2016, 09:05 PM

Interesting volkerdi is going to take it on. Makes sense, LILO has gone dormant before. Kudos to him. @allend - what "UEFI aware" bootloader were you talking of to replace LILO in Slackware?

jpollard · 02-14-2016, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wagscat123

Interesting volkerdi is going to take it on. Makes sense, LILO has gone dormant before. Kudos to him. @allend - what "UEFI aware" bootloader were you talking of to replace LILO in Slackware?

Well, there is elilo.

The usual problem with UEFI boots is "secure" boot. Unless the boot tool is signed by Microsoft (meaning $$) it won't work without first disabling secure boot. Not all UEFI implementations will allow that, and some,like those Windows RT devices, will not work even then as they use a different certificate that what is used to sign non-microsoft boot tools.

Timothy Miller · 02-14-2016, 10:48 PM

elilo was long since abandoned I thought?

allend · 02-15-2016, 01:23 AM

Quote:

what "UEFI aware" bootloader were you talking of to replace LILO in Slackware?

Slackware-current (now Slackware 14.2-beta) includes grub2 for UEFI hardware.

sundialsvcs · 02-16-2016, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpollard

Well, there is elilo.

The usual problem with UEFI boots is "secure" boot. Unless the boot tool is signed by Microsoft (meaning $$) it won't work without first disabling secure boot. Not all UEFI implementations will allow that, and some,like those Windows RT devices, will not work even then as they use a different certificate that what is used to sign non-microsoft boot tools.

Obviously, Microsoft Corporation was "merely" trying to hitch a ride on more-or-less the same bandwagon that has "enriched so-many other companies ... Thawte, VeriSign, and so-forth ... for no particularly-better reason."

(After all, these companies manage to make gobs of money by 'reassuring the public that your website is secure,' even though they in fact do nothing(!) to ensure that it actually is! So, can we r-e-a-l-l-y fault Redmond for wishing to have a piece of that same "well, there's money on the table and it's right there for the taking, isn't it? ... ..." pie?)