Quoting Didier Kryn (kryn@???):

>     For non-standard things I would use SYSLINUX, but for laptops
> and servers I don't want to spend time on hacking the bootloader
> config when the distro is able to automatically install and
> configure a default bootloader which just works, which has been the
> case of Grub2 for years.

Here's the thing: I'm done with relying on Linux distributions' default
choices, because the results have been generally bad. (I'm a longtime
Debian user, since 2.1 Slink.)

Distro defaults produced a default to GNOME, which required an annoying
bit of detective work to get rid of, on my desktop systems over the
years if I'd been unattentive enough to accept defaults during
installation. (Quickest way: Disable
/etc/alternatives/x-session-manager, then apt-get install one's
preferred window manager, and set it as default using
update-alternatives . Later you can apt-get --purge remove all
the GNOME junk you don't want.) Distro defaults gave me Apache httpd
rather than sparser choices like lighttpd and nginx. Distro defaults
threw away my longtime preference in bootloader (lilo) and substituted
GRUB without asking me. Distro defaults accepted dependency hairballs
of Freedesktop.org software that piled junk like D-Bus, upower, udisks2,
packagekit, PolKit, udev, and systemd.

It annoys me that my systems are running GRUB 0.9x when I never asked
for it in the first place, because some release manager decided it
should replace lilo without asking my opinion. It annoys me that, if I
have a boot problem, I'll be facing a GRUB> prompt with a totally alien
command syntax and a gratuitously different device-naming scheme, and
probably have to use a second computer to figure out how to reconfigure
the thing -- where the advantage of lilo was _specifically_ that you
_didn't_ need to hack its config. You just made sure you had a
'fallback' stanza in it that you left alone in order to easily recover
from any problem.

For you, you see Grub2 as better because it Just Works and arrives by
default. I'm much older at this, and to my perspective lilo is what
Just Worked and arrived by default -- until some idiot DD decided to
throw it away without asking my leave to take it.

And, basically, the hell with distribution default package choices.
They've lead to much badness, and I'm done with conceding choice of
software to default package selection.

That doesn't mean I _necessarily_ want to go back to lilo merely out of
nostalgia. I might, or I might opt for something more modern like
extlinux. It depends in part, of course, on hardware constraints. My
point is that my new-ish policy is to never merely accept the judgement
implicit in automatic package selection, and to make mindful choices:
Unbound/NSD instead of BIND9, nginx or Lighttpd instead of Apache2,
lilo or extlinux instead of GRUB 0.9x or GRUB2, s6 or a small PID1 and
OpenRC instead of other init systems, and no D-Bus, upower, udisks2,
packagekit, PolKit, udev, and systemd on my system if I can manage it.

Because it's _my_ system. Distribution default choices can go take a
walk.

>     But I understand perfectly others can make different choices,
> and I support the idea of keeping multiple options available.

I seriously don't even understand why anyone would think the latter was
up for debate. Multiple options _are_ available. And they are going to
keep on being available.

Does anyone here think the discussion was over whether multiple options
would be available? When did someone say 'I think we should rearrange
reality somehow so multiple options are not available'? That doesn't
describe the Linux universe I've been living in since 1993, sir.