GRUB 2 Receives New Font Engine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GRUB 2 Receives New Font Engine

GRUB 2, the next-generation Linux boot loader, has received a new font engine. Version 2 of the GRand Unified Bootloader introduces this new font engine that's written in C and with a font tool in Java...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Njk2Nw

[RealNC]

Too much overkill for "just" a bootloader, imo. GRUB 2 has seen too much overengineering.

[Vadi]

I hope they fix the error reporting. Nevermind that GRUB, being such an important program, doesn't give a solution to the user for helping fix the problem, it doesn't even say what the error is!

It's the ultimate horror situation for a newbie to be stuck with some "GRUB ERROR ##" and an unusable computer.

[DeepDayze]

I'd like a good bootloader that does its job well without so much fluff, yet having good error detection and handling

[yesterday]

Firstly, I believe GRUB2 will have better device detection and will support more filesystems than GRUB1. Secondly, I'm not sure how important error handling is. TBH, unless you are constantly reinstalling distros on your system, how often do you play around with GRUB confiugrations? More precisely, how often do you re-install grub on a partition? The newbie problem is better handled in the distor itself, making sure that sane and working options are set. Finally, the graphical component of GRUB2 was requested to allow for a better and more seamless desktop experience. Currently it is OK in GRUB1, with some SuSe hacks giving the best results. But after so long if the graphical aspect of grub isn't any nicer than GRUB1, then that would be an opportunity lost.

[IanW]

As I understand it (nb: I'm fairly noobish) Grub2 is a requirement for the move to ext4.

[yoshi314]

there are some unofficial patches for old grub as well, just google it.

as far as this news go - i'd rather see a stable release of grub2, and not bother with eye-candy.

[KellyClowers]

Grub2 is great, I have been using it since early last year, and had fewer problems than with grub1

[massysett]

Scripting support? Conditionals? Way too complicated. Meanwhile, Grub 1 recently failed on me because of its vaunted support for reading filesystems. I had installed a new system with ext3, and it had bigger inodes that Grub couldn't read. Of course it took awhile to figure this out. Meanwhile, what worked just fine? LILO! So right now I am having Grub chainload LILO.

If the choice is between this bloated Grub 2 and LILO, I will pick LILO.

[curaga]

There's been a patch for the bigger inodes for grub1 for a while.

I agree they should get a stable grub2 out and then start working on eyecandy if they want.

[Svartalf]

If the choice is between this bloated Grub 2 and LILO, I will pick LILO.

You're lucky LILO even works for you. It relies on the block position of the file to boot, so it has other, nastier failure modes (We've encountered one with one of our probes back three weeks ago at Tektronix (my day job...)- can't go into details, but suffice it to say, LILO's actually WORSE in many regards to GRUB.). There's a reason most of the distros went to it instead of LILO a while back.

[massysett]

There's been a patch for the bigger inodes for grub1 for a while.

Yeah, there is "a patch" but since the Grub maintainers are refusing to deal with "Grub Legacy," it is just an unofficial patch floating around. Some distributors use it; I don't know if all do. Meanwhile "Grub Legacy" is spouting off a useless (worse, *deceiving*) error message for this problem.

Meanwhile LILO works fine...

[Svartalf]

Yeah, there is "a patch" but since the Grub maintainers are refusing to deal with "Grub Legacy," it is just an unofficial patch floating around. Some distributors use it; I don't know if all do. Meanwhile "Grub Legacy" is spouting off a useless (worse, *deceiving*) error message for this problem.

Meanwhile LILO works fine...

This sounds more like it's begging for a fork of GRUB than anything else- there's solid reasons why LILO is deprecated. I'm not kidding.

[yogi_berra]

This sounds more like it's begging for a fork of GRUB than anything else- there's solid reasons why LILO is deprecated. I'm not kidding.

There are also solid reasons why Grub was completely re-written. Ask anyone that has attempted to port Grub Legacy to a new architecture about how lovely the experience is.

[energyman]

grub2 - typical gnu disease. Take over a usefull project and then fuck it up.
Grub does not need all that features. It is a freaking bootloader!
To make its installation suck less and its config easier - now that would be a real improvement. Everything else is just really stupid.

[NeoBrain]

I think the discussion about GRUP2 is the same as about Compiz and KMS. Anyone who likes eye candy and customization loves them and everyone else sees no use in them :D

[grantek]

bah - it may seem a bit pointless now, but it's the only way the basic boot process will progress anywhere so we can ditch all this legacy IBM PC crap. Eye candy's just the freebie that drives development, the way wobbly windows drove compositing window managers.

[energyman]

which 'crap' is dumped?
and please tell - how big may grub2 get with all this superfluos crap?
do we need 1gb boot partitions in the future? 512mb ram - just to boot?

[Kano]

GRUB2 seems to be a good replacement for GRUB1, it can boot from cd now, that's what was missing before. Now I only need somebody who wants to create a nice theme for me ;)

[sabriah]

Grub2 is great, I have been using it since early last year, and had fewer problems than with grub1

Good! I am trying to add a new hard drive to my machine, which uses GRUB2. Please, add a link to any description on how to make that work. I am unable to find it anywhere!

[grantek]

which 'crap' is dumped?
and please tell - how big may grub2 get with all this superfluos crap?
do we need 1gb boot partitions in the future? 512mb ram - just to boot?
Quite the opposite is what I'm after - what I was trying to say is that focus and new technologies in the area of OS booting should hopefully lead us to a place where we can dump the BIOS, get rid of any legacy hard-coded delays in hardware initialisation specs, support something like static pre-loadable boot images (like a generic hibernation image), and be able to boot to a clean desktop in 2 seconds :)

I think better internationalisation support is a big step in modernising things, as you can probably tell by all the "s"s in this post :)

[KellyClowers]

Good! I am trying to add a new hard drive to my machine, which uses GRUB2. Please, add a link to any description on how to make that work. I am unable to find it anywhere!

You mean replace the boot drive? Or add a new drive that will also be bootable? A new data-only drive that does not boot doesn't need any grub adjustment.

If you have a bootable drive already, and you want to be able to boot an OS on a new drive, I believe you would run "grub-setup (hdx,y)" where x is the number of the drive counting from 0 (so if this is your second hd, it would be 1) and y is the partition number starting from 1 (first partition on the disk would be 1).

Some info, but they made one mistake and said that partitions count from 0. Partitions actually count from 1
http://diliman-networks.com/?page_id=21


Info is pretty rare and scattered at this point, if you are trying to do something else, or need more help, post here again, or ask on IRC (try ChatZilla for Firefox if you aren't familiar with IRC) irc://irc.freenode.net/#grub

[sabriah]

A new data-only drive that does not boot doesn't need any grub adjustment.

Hi,

Thanks for your comment! It is data-only drive that doesn't boot. Good to hear I won't need any grub adjustment. :cool:

I guess the reason why it isn't found in mtab and/or fstab must be found elsewhere.

[stevenaaus]

... Linus would do it in a day if someone asked him nicely ;>

Reallly, Grub project managers are idiots imho. They mouthed
off - well over 5 years ago - "please don't do anything
more for Grub 1, it is deprecated". (I've submitted a patch,
and offerred to help). Well... the vast majority of Linux
distros use Grub, and numerous bug-fixes and simple features
have been totally neglected...

Perhaps there are technical reasons a rewrite was needed,
but disowning Grub 1 for the last forever is typical GNU
head-in-their-arse stuff. "And we number everything from
zero, because that's how it should be". F-ing wankers.
Sorry for being so flambastic, but can you say "Hurd".

Yesterday wrote:

> Firstly, I believe GRUB2 will have better device detection
> and will support more filesystems than GRUB1. Secondly,
> I'm not sure how important error handling is. TBH, unless
> you are constantly reinstalling distros on your system,
> how often do you play around with GRUB confiugrations?

What to say... Are you for real ? Go back to windows fanboy
forums please.

Kano wrote:

> GRUB2 seems to be a good replacement for GRUB1, it can boot from cd now,
> that's what was missing before.

Thanks for the heads-up. Good to hear :>