[syslinux] Re: syslinux] syslinux vs grub

[R P Herrold]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Unfortunately, it's not clear to me anymore to what extent the work I'm doing 
> is useful.
<snip>
> Is it worth bothering with going forward, or am I wasting my time?  If so, 
> what should I be focusing on?

I guess the real niche I see your efforts filling (admirably) 
is for small, approachable loaders, suitable particularly for 
installers, and slender implementations.  I note the present 
time is a bit after 5 am EDT, and 2 am PDT -- sounds like a 
lonely 2 am thought to me.  I wish I could call to say: 
Thanks !!

I appreciate your work; I use your work every day, and I would 
miss it greatly if it became unusable as hardware evolved. 
Its presence and quality (with busybox) makes small, niche 
loaders and distribution creation possible.

It is clear that large parts of the future will move to 
smaller (possibly wired, possibly IR or wireless or bluetooth 
[and whatever the next such technology will be] connected) 
smart devices, probably acting as clients of fewer central 
device(s) -- this client/server model is the only one 
providing for reasonable and scalable deployment, and 
management.

The deployment of RFC 1918 and self-organizing Zeroconf 
networks, and the ongoing IPv6 infrastruture buildout, 
combined with FOSS implementation from the bottom of the 
stack, and continuing up into the meta-app layer have made 
this doable and probable.  Seeing this prospect, I build my 
parts toward, and (eating my own dogfood, during development) 
have 'lived in' parts of that future for many years, with the 
Syslinux tools a part of that existence.

Could I transition to grub? -- maybe -- but I took a run at 
the topic, 12-18 months ago to expand my coverage [and not to 
replace or displace Syslinux based tools], and found the 
documentation opague, incomplete, stale, and incomplete. 
Yuck.

That said, you have been developing in a reactive mode, rather 
than from plan in the last year or so.  This has to be tiring. 
If you are not feeling 'the itch', it may be profitable to 
consider what future you want to attain.

Anyway, I appreciate your work.

-- Russ Herrold