Views on bootloaders, please

[Brian49]

I would be very grateful for any views on these points, please:

(1) whether the current GRUB is now better than the legacy version;

(2) whether there is any benefit in switching from GRUB to EXTLINUX.

I'm talking about choices which might be made by the individual user; I'm not suggesting any changes to the vanilla install of LMDE. I've read up as much as I can find about bootloaders elsewhere on the internet. Many thanks.

[lmintnewb]

Just opinions,

Bootloaders like most things nix you have no shortage of options. So much of it will come down to a preference, what you like and what works best for you or you spend the most time learning to work with. I prefer grub legacy over grub2. Not cause it's better per se. Just like it more and find it easier for me to work with. It came with a distro. Made commenting out menu entries I didn't want easier than grub2 seemed to for a newb. Other things like that. So I've learned to boot mucho stuff using it and it doesn't cause me any probs. Sure grub2 works dandy too. Comes back to the it's really your choice thing.

Enough reputable distro's use grub2. So really doubt there's anything wrong with it. Grub, lilo ... here we are again at choices and what you prefer to learn to use. Though would think it'd be prudent to stick to one that's well supported and been in use for awhile. For obvious reasons ... it's been in use for awhile, so should be to the point where it's ready for prime time with no major flaws. Plus a well supported BL that's got a history and track record will likely have more info available to reference on it. If you wanna learn more or if you run into problems and need to find a fix on the net. ... etc.

(edit) In fact since grub2 is more recent and actively supported. Would assume it can do stuff legacy can't. Though didn't spend that much time learning about it. I just wanted a bootloader that does it's job. Don't care about fancy splash screens this n that. Wanted one that made it easy to get rid of a Windows recovery partition menu entry. That no doubt would've wrecked havoc if I'd accidently selected it in hurry while trying to boot up an OS on this old box. Didn't want to mess around too much with grub2's files and risk borking up the BL. Though reinstalling a bootloader isn't much work. Still felt a lil bit leery about messing with it. So found out by happenstance that legacy makes commenting out an entry straightforward ... ie: #entry you don't want ... done.

I'm so friggin caffeinated, all over the place on this post, lol. That'll teach you to post a question on a forum where I have posting privileges mister !

[AlbertP]

Grub 2 is one of the best bootloaders in my opinion. You can add a new OS very easily (sudo update-grub), which doesn't work as easy on Extlinux and Grub legacy.
By the way, it supports many partition types while Extlinux is bound to ext2/3/4.
I'd recommend to use Grub 2 as long as you don't have problems with it.

[Brian49]

Thanks very much for responding. I was especially hoping to learn a bit more about ExtLinux, but never mind. I wish there were some way of trying out different bootloaders painlessly, i.e. without the risk of making the system unbootable!

[AlbertP]

You can try them in a virtual machine.