What are the pros & cons of not using GRUB ?

[dhubs]

good evening dear friends, hello to you,


well during the installation of Linux on my Notebooks (older ones) i sometimes recognized some notifications regarding GRUB...

note: i have a Thinkpad T 420 and a Thinkpad T 520 and i am loving these! Well in my opinion: if there's a notebook built to last, it's the T 520 and the T 420:
I think these devices are truly ultra-robust: the Lenovo T520 notebook has outlived several newer devices here ? it's been used in rougher conditions and is considerably more robust than almost all the other devices here. I'm impressed ? what are your experiences here... ? with the case and keyboard? Well, I've heard from many people that they're used as service devices ? and they were basically unbeatable.

The simple design with maintenance hatches and docking station was simply extremely well thought out.

Some of my fellow students were in the field and used a ThinkPad as a notebook. For some, the conditions were extremely rough ? and the devices lasted ? for over 10 years or even longer ? and still work perfectly today. Honestly: I've never seen such a practical device on the notebook market before or since.

back to the current topic: i am installing Linux on these older notebooks - quite some: and sometimes i stumble over the question - should i use Grub!?
Should i take care for GRUB and the correct installation of Grub!?

my question is: why do you guys still use GRUB?

why do you use Grub - i do not know much very about Grub - and yes: i am sure that all i know and write here
is biased or probably incorrect so feel free to dissuade me.

Why should /could we use GRUB?

Even so, I've seeing people installing GRUB anyway on new computers, because maybe they are unware of it ?

in short: What are the pros & cons of not using GRUB?

Plz lemme know your ideas and thoughts


best regards

[michaelk]

grub is probably the bootloader used by most distributions. Computers with legacy BIOS that dual boots you may or may not want to install or overwrite the existing bootloader in the MBR which is why you might see the question during installation. In that case you could use another bootloader to chain load that OS.

The typical x86 computer needs a bootloader. UEFI works a bit differently but still need some bootloader. There are other bootloaders and I would say that most just go with whatever the distribution uses.

[dhubs]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your detailed and understandable answer! 🙏

You really summed it up well ? especially the information on legacy BIOS vs. UEFI and the role of the bootloader helped me put the whole thing into perspective.

I always find it fascinating how much expertise is shared here in the forum ? answers like yours are particularly helpful not only to me, but certainly to other readers as well. It's clear that you not only know the topic, but also have a clear overview of the options.

I'll look into alternatives like rEFInd or systemd-boot a bit more ? but I think you're right, GRUB is often simply the most pragmatic approach, especially if you don't want to configure everything manually.

Thanks again ? and if you ever want to share some experiences with other bootloaders (or have an opinion on GRUB2 vs. GRUB-Legacy), please do! 😊

Best regards
matze

plz keep up the awesome work - and your great support here: i am pretty sure that many many others will benefit too.
this forum is a truely incredible place...

[michaelk]

Just my opinions. There are many bootloaders.

syslinux can be used for "regular" booting but it does not have multiboot capability and better for USB and optical disks.

grub legacy is no longer being developed, does not support gpt disks, btrfs or UEFI.

grub2 which is probably the defacto standard now days.

I have not played with rEFInd or systemd-boot. They are quite similar to grub2 in features. rEFInd specific for UEFI might be better for booting MACs.