Boot, Boot, Master Record!

[jeff_duntemann]

I've done some boot loader work in my time, but it's a classic example of a skill most people don't use often enough to get good at, and that's certainly true in my case. I have used System Commander for several years now, and always did well with it, and even understood it reasonably well.

Comments

[baron_waste]

You might have to wander down to your local technical college and pick up a textbook - say, for A+ certification. Unless you already have a small library of such, in which case never mind.

[jeff_duntemann]

Well, actually I have a largish library of such, but the problem is that the library is getting old, and GRUB is much newer than LILO. So what I probably need to do is buy newer editions of my cornerstone works on Linux. Not much gets old faster than computer books.

grub and other mysteries...

[anonymous]

Ah, but as it's open source, there simply are no problems. And of course, Linux is so much friendlier than Windows, right?

Sorry, but the many mysteries of Linux internals are no more intuitive than were the smaller number of similar mysteries in the old days of Unix. Enter the priesthood of white-coated Linux geeks, without whom we are stuck with whatever behaviors any particular distribution offers.

Somewhere in a box, I may still have a copy of a book that purports to make clear how to build your own Linux distribution. I wonder whether that may shed some light on the issue? Alas, I do not even recall by which company it was published.

But then, as the source is open, and our time is (apparently) worth nothing, who needs a book?

For my part, I will take the devil I know. If Linux ever gets beyond the stage of being owned by cult-socialists, we may hope for better.

Bill Meyer

[kevinnickerson]

It's fun the way I'll read a couple words and my mind goes off one way, only to be brought up short.

I read "I've done some boot loader work in my time" and my first thought was "wow, it's been 15 years since I last had to write a boot loader". Then I realized you meant "used some tools".

[jeff_duntemann]

Yes; I certainly don't claim the smarts to write a modern boot loader. There was a time, however, when it was easier to write a boot loader than to configure a modern one. (I'm thinking 1980 and Z80 CP/M.) Of course, we didn't attempt to put nine operating systems on a single disk then, either.