FC4t2 no good without LILO

[Peter Jones]

On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 17:23 -0700, Mike Bird wrote:
> I just checked the Redhat and Fedora distros which I still have around. 
> Here are the Lilo versions:
[list of 8 different versions clipped for brevity]
> Most of the version bumps were for new Redhat releases and involved no
> source changes.  There was only one patch to Redhat's Lilo in the last
> two years: a single #define.

People stopped finding so many bugs once we stopped using lilo by
default.  That's been explained to you several times now.

You also need to look at all the other packages involved in setting up
and maintaining the bootloader to.  They're pretty complicated, and a
lot of work.

>  Lilo version 21.4.4 actually dates back to 2000.

And it needs plenty of work done, if we were going to consider using it
again.  More than grub currently needs, I suspect.

> So we have a package that is essential in some circumstances,

So far, you won't mention which circumstances those are.  So I think
most of us aren't considering this to be a fact.

>  that costs next to nothing to maintain

That's simply not true -- there are several more patches to lilo that
have been applied for RHEL, or that may unfortunately need to be
applied.  There's also very difficult logic in booty, anaconda, up2date,
and likely several other packages that has to handle it.

And there's also a *huge* support cost to everybody involved with
helping other users, which you're obviously content to completely
ignore.  It isn't nearly as easy for most users as grub is.

> , and that takes up <0.1% of a CD's space. 

I already told you, this really didn't affect things.

> The experience of many people in the real world is that even  a five
> year old version of Lilo is more reliable than today's Grub.

The plural of anecdote is not data.  Right now, the number of people we
can document who admit to having such experience is hovering menacingly
around 5.  And that's five really bad sources -- none of them will
provide any detail on what's gone wrong at all!

> Certainly a five year old version of Lilo handles software RAID better than
> today's Grub.

This is just plain insulting.  You haven't even *tried* the software
RAID support in today's grub.  You've already said as much today!

> And so the cardinals of the Redhat vatican issue a bull banning Lilo.

Nobody's stopping you from using it, so quit pretending that's what
we're doing.  You have just as much choice as I do; you're choosing to
whine on a mailing list about problems you won't even name, much less
provide technical facts to support.  I'm choosing to continue not
resurrecting lilo, since none of the group of you who want it back are
willing to provide any technical reasons whatsoever.

Complaining more isn't going to change my mind.  Continuing to refuse to
provide any technical details on whatever your problem is won't make me
any more likely to, either.  If you really, really want lilo back,
you're going to have to actually *convince* me that it's a good idea.
You don't have to convince me that you've had a really bad experience,
that's obvious.  But if you can't tell me why, I can't help make sure
anybody's experience is any better.

-- 
        Peter