Re: reasons to ditch LILO before upgrading to jessie?
On Sat 09 Jul 2016 at 16:41:24 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 9, 2016, at 16:00, Brian wrote:
> >
> > All well and good but the installer inexplicably offers a choice between
> > GRUB and LILO. The installer manual is unhelpful on which to choose. A
> > newcomer wouldn't have a clue. We do them no service with this retrograde
> > offering. Get rid of it.
> >
> > What is the point of a choice? Just offer GRUB; it is the bootloader for
> > Debian and has many advantages over LILO in todayss Linux ecosystem.
> > People who have a great desire to use LILO can search it out.
> >
> > Unmaintained in Debian, The bit-rot starts here.
>
> I am not a member of the Debian installer team, and I am not authorized to
> speak for them. However, I will make the observation that LILO used to be
> the default boot loader, indeed the only boot loader at one point, in the
> Debian installer for i386/amd64. I suspect that LILO has been retained as
> an option in the Debian installer for that reason.
Historical reasons for doing something aren't necessarily bad reasons
but there comes a time when a reassessment of what goes into the
installer has to be made. For example, Stretch drops quite a few of what
in Jessie are Standard utilities. Not on technical grounds but because
of their usefulness to most users.
> The lilo package is maintained in Debian. It's maintainer is Joachim Wiedorn.
> He is also the upstream maintainer. He has ceased active development of
> lilo, but I believe he still accepts bug reports. And if he wants rid of it,
> I know a couple of people who are interested in taking it over, myself included.
> So I'm not concerned about it's maintenance status. As long as there are
> PCs with a BIOS, or a CSM, lilo will remain usable. If the BIOS/CSM goes,
> lilo goes with it. lilo can't function without a BIOS/CSM. But for UEFI-only
> systems, there's elilo as a grub alternative.
That's a good reason for keeping LILO in Debian. I would hope it doesn't
disappear.
> Long live choice!
For choice to exist it does not have to be presented as such in the
installer.
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