Limine is an advanced, portable, multiprotocol bootloader that supports Linux, multiboot1 and 2, the native Limine boot protocol, and more.
[…]Limine is lightweight, elegant, fast, and the reference implementation of the Limine boot protocol.
The Limine boot protocol’s main target audience is operating system and kernel developers that want to use a boot protocol which supports modern features in an elegant manner, that GRUB’s aging multiboot protocols do not (or do not properly).
↫ Limine website
I wish trying out different bootloaders was an easier thing to do. Personally, since my systems only run Fedora Linux, I’d love to just move them all over to systemd-boot and not deal with GRUB at all anymore, but since it’s not supported by Fedora I’m worried updates might break the boot process at some point. On systems where only one operating system is installed, as a user I should really be given the choice to opt for the simplest, most basic boot sequence, even if it can’t boot any other operating systems or if it’s more limited than GRUB.
“On systems where only one operating system is installed, as a user I should really be given the choice to opt for the simplest, most basic boot sequence, even if it can’t boot any other operating systems or if it’s more limited than GRUB.”
Yeah, it’s called LILO, and it’s a shame modern distros don’t use it anymore.
darkhog,
My vote is syslinux for the win!
I’d say **systemd-boot / bootctl / gummiboot** is actually far better, even than LiLO. It’s VERY straightforward, easy to use, compact and it just works.
LiLO itself is very old and nobody seem to update the codebase anymore.
I would go one step deeper, and use Linux to boot Linux:
http://vigir.missouri.edu/~gdesouza/Research/PC104/arm-linux-bootloader.php
Light joke aside, since Linux kernel can be directly loaded from UEFI, it technically no longer needs a bootloader. Even command line editing can be done within EFI shell itself.
However since I know of no good EFI system that does this, we still need bootloaders.
This is what RedHat is currently working on, booting from a UKI which includes a kernel and initrd. I have implemented this for myself, and it’s quite straighforward:
https://github.com/pepa65/misc/blob/master/mkuki
That said, I am currently using systemd’s boot (formerly gummi boot). It integrates well with Debian/Ubuntu/Mint type systems, and I had it running on Arch and Void as well, but they have their own solutions:
https://github.com/pepa65/misc/blob/master/bootctlu
pepa65,
Thanks for the links! I did not realize they have more progress since last time I looked into the details.
literally came here to reminisce simpler times of lilo.
Simpler, till you forget to run lilo after upgrading your kernel….
No thanks :/
See my comment to @shiny