On Fri,On Fri, 30 Jan 2015, Steve Litt wrote:
> Is it just me, or is Grub2 as complex and error prone as systemd?
>
> I'm wondering if we can have alternate boot loaders.
>
> SteveT
>

I'm sure you know it already, but it is definitely worth pointing out
the classic LILO is still maintained

Though it isn't as horrible as Systemd, I agree that Grub2 is a nightmare.
I would be willing to call it the "Systemd of boot loaders." But as I
understand it, Grub2 is now the default in Debian, isn't it?

Grub1, or "Grub Legacy" as it's now called, is fine. But if any distro
wants to use it, I strongly suggest the patched version which supports UEFI
booting (as well as old-fashioned MBR booting). As I mentioned in a recent
post, my attempt to boot AntiX (a Debian distro which uses Grub1 as
default) failed because I had my laptop set up to use UEFI booting. I ran
into the same problem with PCLinuxOS for the same reason. The patched
version of Grub1 has been around for a few years now, but is seldom used.

Despite its age, LILO is good. Slackware uses it by default, and I had no
issues when I tried booting it UEFI style. You do have to make sure to have
ELILO available if you want to use it with UEFI.

cheers,
Robert