Feature changed by: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) Feature #308520, revision 3 Title: Change bootloader to lilo - it just works. openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Per Jessen (pjessen) Description: In light of recent discussion wrt bootloader, in particular GRUB and GRUB2, I would like to suggest an alternative: that we revert to lilo as the default and supported boot-loader. As at least two people have said, lilo just works. It is a tried and tested, file-system independent and mature boot-loader. Lilo is boring - just what we need for a stable distribution. Let me take care of the counter-arguments right away: * lilo doesn't support reiserfs' tail option. (requires that the /boot file-system is mounted with –notail). Not really much of a drawback, IMHO. Reiserfs has been slowly losing popularity, and with this tail option being a reiserfs-only feature, this is a corner case barely worth considering. * lilo is poor wrt recovery and diagnostics. Granted, it probably is. For a system to be played and experimented with, lilo might not be optimal. For a stable production system, whether a server, an office desktop or a home system, lilo does a very good job. Discussion: #1: Jeff Mahoney (jeff_mahoney) (2009-12-11 16:48:28) reiserfs is losing popularity, but we expect btrfs to gain popularlity. It has a similar design compared to reiserfs and supports tail packing.   Additionally, with online defragmentation supported added to both ext4 and btrfs, the static maps that lilo manages will become invalid at random times. Having a defrag tool update the boot loader is just stupid. + #2: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) (2009-12-12 00:33:23) + I do not vote for lilo as default bootloader, I prefer grub. + I vote for havivng lilo as another, alternative, bootloader. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308520

Feature changed by: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) Feature #308520, revision 6 Title: Change bootloader to lilo - it just works. openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Per Jessen (pjessen) Description: In light of recent discussion wrt bootloader, in particular GRUB and GRUB2, I would like to suggest an alternative: that we revert to lilo as the default and supported boot-loader. As at least two people have said, lilo just works. It is a tried and tested, file-system independent and mature boot-loader. Lilo is boring - just what we need for a stable distribution. Let me take care of the counter-arguments right away: * lilo doesn't support reiserfs' tail option. (requires that the /boot file-system is mounted with –notail). Not really much of a drawback, IMHO. Reiserfs has been slowly losing popularity, and with this tail option being a reiserfs-only feature, this is a corner case barely worth considering. * lilo is poor wrt recovery and diagnostics. Granted, it probably is. For a system to be played and experimented with, lilo might not be optimal. For a stable production system, whether a server, an office desktop or a home system, lilo does a very good job. Discussion: #1: Jeff Mahoney (jeff_mahoney) (2009-12-11 16:48:28) reiserfs is losing popularity, but we expect btrfs to gain popularlity. It has a similar design compared to reiserfs and supports tail packing.   Additionally, with online defragmentation supported added to both ext4 and btrfs, the static maps that lilo manages will become invalid at random times. Having a defrag tool update the boot loader is just stupid. #2: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) (2009-12-12 00:33:23) I do not vote for lilo as default bootloader, I prefer grub. I vote for havivng lilo as another, alternative, bootloader. #3: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-12 13:40:19) GRUB can find & use kernels & initrds on another disk, or restored backup; without having to be re-installed.  When trying out a different kernel then typos do occur and GRUB lets you edit the boot line and then fix config file later, whereas lilo would involve booting to last working kernel, edit config, re-installing lilo and then rebooting once again to test. + #4: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-12-12 14:23:41) + SUSE already offers LILO if you desire so (at least this was the case + last time I bothered looking for it). Note however that the amount of + kernels it can have in its list is limited. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308520

Feature changed by: Thomas Schmidt (digitaltomm) Feature #308520, revision 8 Title: Change bootloader to lilo - it just works. - openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed + openSUSE-11.3: Rejected by Thomas Schmidt (digitaltomm) + reject reason: Not done. Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Per Jessen (pjessen) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: In light of recent discussion wrt bootloader, in particular GRUB and GRUB2, I would like to suggest an alternative: that we revert to lilo as the default and supported boot-loader. As at least two people have said, lilo just works. It is a tried and tested, file-system independent and mature boot-loader. Lilo is boring - just what we need for a stable distribution. Let me take care of the counter-arguments right away: * lilo doesn't support reiserfs' tail option. (requires that the /boot file-system is mounted with –notail). Not really much of a drawback, IMHO. Reiserfs has been slowly losing popularity, and with this tail option being a reiserfs-only feature, this is a corner case barely worth considering. * lilo is poor wrt recovery and diagnostics. Granted, it probably is. For a system to be played and experimented with, lilo might not be optimal. For a stable production system, whether a server, an office desktop or a home system, lilo does a very good job. Discussion: #1: Jeff Mahoney (jeff_mahoney) (2009-12-11 16:48:28) reiserfs is losing popularity, but we expect btrfs to gain popularlity. It has a similar design compared to reiserfs and supports tail packing.   Additionally, with online defragmentation supported added to both ext4 and btrfs, the static maps that lilo manages will become invalid at random times. Having a defrag tool update the boot loader is just stupid. #2: Carlos Robinson (robin_listas) (2009-12-12 00:33:23) I do not vote for lilo as default bootloader, I prefer grub. I vote for havivng lilo as another, alternative, bootloader. #3: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-12 13:40:19) GRUB can find & use kernels & initrds on another disk, or restored backup; without having to be re-installed.  When trying out a different kernel then typos do occur and GRUB lets you edit the boot line and then fix config file later, whereas lilo would involve booting to last working kernel, edit config, re-installing lilo and then rebooting once again to test. #4: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-12-12 14:23:41) SUSE already offers LILO if you desire so (at least this was the case last time I bothered looking for it). Note however that the amount of kernels it can have in its list is limited. #5: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2009-12-16 09:03:16) (reply to #4) LILO was deprecated in openSUSE as of 11.1. It is present, but unsupported during installation. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/308520