Lilo v. Grub
 

Once I used Slackware, I couldn't stop, but I remember from a few other installs that they used grub. And it is still in the extras folder. To me, lilo seems so much simpler and easy to setup and use. I wanted to hear some of the advantages of each, and see why those that have switched to grub have switched.

grub actually reads config files so you don't have to reinstall every time you change something. it supports more than linux and is generally much more full of features than lilo, if you don't mind the fact that it's really not done yet.

i think most of the slackers will choose lilo since lilo is a default boot mgr for slackware. personally i never user grub before so the answer will be lilo...

i believe grub and lilo are equally good.....

I don't think "equally good" is the most accurate term.. grubs functionality will one day destroy that of lilos, but that day is slow in coming but I still predict that lilo will be considered more stable.

as it stands now I think lilo is 'better' in traditional terms. but grub has promise.

I prefer Grub for its easy config update and its shell at boot with usefull commands (find, cat...)
It can do net boot, and it's incredibly stable (the software comes from gnu.org dev)

as i understand it, the extra functionality of grub is very usefull on systems
that don't have a cd-rom or floppy-drive.
in that case you cannot boot with a cd and you need the grub-shell for troubleshooting.

but i never used it.
the lilo config file is simple to understand and since it's Slackware default i use it.

but i think when you setup a server without any cd/floppy drives
grub is a better choice.

egag

I also started with Lilo & Slack, but now I use Grub.

It's far easier to update Grub, as I share my /boot partition with all distros, and that's where the config files live.

I also find it easier to get out of config problems with Grub: When I first switched to it, I screwed up the drive numbers (hda1 as hd0,1 or some such). With Lilo, I'd have been completely stuck, but Grub went straight to a command prompt, where all I had to do was type 'help', and I managed to boot Linux from there no problem.

looks like i have to try grub....

I stick with Lilo, simply because that's what I have learned from forums, guides, etc about slack. If I mess around with the BSD's or OpenSolaris.org, I suppose I would probably use grub.

All I need a boot loader to do is load and boot. Extra features in this area do not really impress me.

Since I never overwrite my old kernel for recovery's sake, I have to add something to the config file each time anyway. This makes the "ease of update" issue moot for me. And lilo works just fine for recovery too. (If you've read the message you get before pressing that first <ENTER> on your Slackware install... :D )

What lilo does not have, apparently, is in-line help documentation. I'm a minimalist, so this is the way I like it. I vote LILO.

What I mean with the "ease of update" is you don't need to re-install the boot loader after each config update

I'd say that your preference for LILO or GRUB is entirely personal and should be based on need. I have no need to dual-boot, and in fact configure LILO not to pause or prompt me, but instead to just dive right into booting the one version of Linux I have installed.

If you use multiple Linux distributions, or some alternative OS (like Windows, :) ), I could see weighing the strengths and weaknesses, but for most of us desktop users, it's a moot question.

with the new lilo in slack 10.1, are you not able to edit lilo.conf w/o reistalling the lilo boot loader? you guys keep saying that you have to reinstall lilo every time you make a change regarding the boot loader. I dunno, but I was able to install Fedora Core 3 into a separate partition and point the lilo boot loader to my other partition without reinstalling lilo. The only problem is that I haven't discovered how to rename the partition that it points to, so it just loads up under /hdb4... :-P

I guess given those facts (and since FC3 comes with grub), I am a lilo supporter myself.... just can't get enough of the simplicity.

i multi-boot xp, slack and suse, and never was able to boot suse with lilo...but it boots with grub everytime...plus, for me anyways...grub seems easier and more stable...like slackware, it just works :)

@mrchaos
don't think so .
from ...../doc/lilo..../README :

----------
- Run /sbin/lilo _whenever_ the kernel or any part of LILO, including its
configuration file, has changed. When in doubt, run it. You can't run
/sbin/lilo too many times.
-----------

egag

edit: added @mrchaos