On Sat 09 Jul 2016 at 16:41:24 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote: > On Sat, Jul 9, 2016, at 16:00, Brian wrote: > > > > All well and good but the installer inexplicably offers a choice between > > GRUB and LILO. The installer manual is unhelpful on which to choose. A > > newcomer wouldn't have a clue. We do them no service with this retrograde > > offering. Get rid of it. > > > > What is the point of a choice? Just offer GRUB; it is the bootloader for > > Debian and has many advantages over LILO in todayss Linux ecosystem. > > People who have a great desire to use LILO can search it out. > > > > Unmaintained in Debian, The bit-rot starts here. > > I am not a member of the Debian installer team, and I am not authorized to > speak for them. However, I will make the observation that LILO used to be > the default boot loader, indeed the only boot loader at one point, in the > Debian installer for i386/amd64. I suspect that LILO has been retained as > an option in the Debian installer for that reason.
Historical reasons for doing something aren't necessarily bad reasons but there comes a time when a reassessment of what goes into the installer has to be made. For example, Stretch drops quite a few of what in Jessie are Standard utilities. Not on technical grounds but because of their usefulness to most users. > The lilo package is maintained in Debian. It's maintainer is Joachim Wiedorn. > He is also the upstream maintainer. He has ceased active development of > lilo, but I believe he still accepts bug reports. And if he wants rid of it, > I know a couple of people who are interested in taking it over, myself > included. > So I'm not concerned about it's maintenance status. As long as there are > PCs with a BIOS, or a CSM, lilo will remain usable. If the BIOS/CSM goes, > lilo goes with it. lilo can't function without a BIOS/CSM. But for UEFI-only > systems, there's elilo as a grub alternative. That's a good reason for keeping LILO in Debian. I would hope it doesn't disappear. > Long live choice! For choice to exist it does not have to be presented as such in the installer.
