Grub2 usability [Was: Simplified Chinese screenshots]

[Michal Suchanek]

On 3 February 2010 04:42, Chris Jones <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 05:36:40PM EST, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Feb/01/2010, Chris Jones wrote:
>> > On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 04:32:14PM EST, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Hi,
>> > >
>> > > Aron Xu sent me some screenshots of Grub booting time in Chinese:
>> > >
>> > > http://carles.lastdot.org/Screenshot-QEMU.png
>> > > http://carles.lastdot.org/Screenshot-QEMU-1.png
>> > > http://carles.lastdot.org/Screenshot-QEMU-2.png
>> >
>> > Thanks for posting this -- quite impressive. It would be nice to
>> > upload a few such multi-lingual screenshots to a grub-gallery section
>> > of the wiki, don't you think..?
>>
>> When more translations will be done I will consider/do it. If someone
>> wants to do please go ahead :-)
>
> I wish I could.. elegant scripts like Bengali, Tamil, would be such a
> nice addition to the usual 7-bit ascii sreenshots.
>
>> > Nice to see that there are users who are able to do some useful stuff
>> > with the new grub, especially since lately, I have seen a couple of
>> > trolls spreading some pretty inane FUD about the new grub on the
>> > debian-user mailing list.
>>
>> I haven't read the insane FUD(s). One important thing that we are on it
>> (Bruce I think) is writing documentation. Ok, we usually don't like it,
>> but the time spent writting http://grub.enbug.org/TestGettext payedback
>> very fast with the screenshots and I hope that more translators testing
>> the translations... and people understanding a bit how it works or how
>> to test it.
>
> Inane, not insane.. But I thought I'd mention the fact that on usually
> fairly rational mailing lists such as debian's, there appears to be a
> trend right now.. some inexperienced user hoses his box, complains, and
> a few would-be gurus start spreading rumors..
>

I haven't read those FUDs but it's completely true that it's much more
likely to get your box hosed if you install grub2 than any other boot
loader I tried so far.

There has been no issue with grub legacy for ages (probably due to
lack of any development whatsoever) but there were at least two
different bugs in Debian grub2 packages which would render a box
unbootable by just upgrading grub2.

The fact is that grub2 is usable for may things but is still under
development and so far is not stable, at least not at the level of
stability users expect from stable or even testing Debian packages.

I would gladly recommend grub2 rescue disk as a backup solution or
feature preview but grub2 as the primary bootloader is a pain in the
backside.

Thanks

Michal