Talk:Comparison of bootloaders

Boot Manager / Boot Loader
This article merges the 2 notions of boot managing and boot loading.

For example "Air-Boot" is only a Boot manager that has to be chained with a Boot loader, for example the NTLDR file of Windows.

Most of the boot loaders contain also a boot manager (GRUB for example), but there is a lot of boot managers only (GAG for example). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:8B5A:F6E0:EC49:4C1D:33F2:4C49 (talk) 14:13, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Delete: Ambigous or Wrong
Bootloaders such GRUB cannot load windows - instead they chainload to NTLDR or some other bootloader capable of handling Windows. The same practice applies in reverse. In essence there should be no 'No' option at all, and this simply be replaced by 'Must Chainload', either that or loaders such as GRUB should be changed from 'Yes' to 'No'. This page is so ambigous (or wrong) I suggest it be deleted and either restarted or replaced with a 'List of bootloaders' page. LaudanumCoda 22:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * sofixit Will (is it can be time for messages now plz?) 01:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Boot Camp is not bootloader217.174.108.179 11:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we should add if a bootloader support EFI or not --Scls19fr 20:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

We should restart this page.

Only in MBR should be revised so that a Yes is a good thing (can be placed in other places besides the MBR) and No shows a lack of a feature. As is, a red no appears if the bootloader is flexible enough to be placed outside the MBR. 67.95.255.30 (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be called comaprison of bootloaders
It should be called "Comparison of" not "List of" since it is a comparison and "boot loader" is the prevailing term not "bootloader". The correct title of this article should be Comparison of boot loaders. -- Gudeldar 13:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The ability to boot another boot loader
Can windows boot manager really boot windows nt/2k/xp/2k3??? I think it calls the NTLDR to load them.

How can GRUB boot a Windows NT system (directly)??

I think the entry should be removed if the boot loader calls another boot loader like Windows Boot Manager calls NTLDR, GRUB calls Windows Boot Manager...

I thought Windows Boot Manager was just a glorified name for NTLDR, sort of how Windows Mail is just a glorified name for Outlook Express. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.117.239.16 (talk) 17:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Grub Legacy or Grub 2.0 ?
This comparison should distinguish between the two distinct bootloaders from the Grub project. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.61.38.222 (talk) 12:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Recent revert
This edit made the article internally inconsistent, using the terms "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" interchangeably. This is confusing; we should use one or the other. It should be reverted. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

How is "No (calls NTLDR)" different from "Yes (NTLDR Chain-loading supported)"?
I don't see how these are any different. 95.146.57.33 (talk) 05:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps bootloader tool EasyBCD by NeoSmart should be mentioned?
ref: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

"EasyBCD extends and revamps the Windows Vista/Windows 7 BCD bootloader, and ..."

"... configuring a dual-boot between Windows 7, Windows Vista, older versions of Windows such as XP & 2003, Linux, Ubuntu, BSD, and Mac OS X ..."

"Boot into XP/Vista/7/Ubuntu/OS X ..."

"Boot from USB, Network, ISO images, Virtual Harddisks (VHD), WinPE ..."

While not a bootloader itself, this tool claims to provide material help.

[Proprietary Freeware] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.118.7 (talk) 07:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Suggest new comparison fields: Max drive size supported; Is actively maintained; Able to hide partitions
Bottom line: this comparison doesn't help me make a good choice for a bootloader.

Three new categories would make the comparisons complete and make the guide much more useful:

Max drive size supported

Is actively maintained

Able to hide partitions

I'm currently using BootStar to multiboot, but it won't handle my 2TB Seagate drive. I'm trying to do research to select a new boot manager that is actively maintained, supports drives up to 4 TB (past the hardware limitations of BIOS/MBR, using Extensible Firmware Interface & GUID Partition Tables), and whether it can hide my XP SP1 partition from my XP SP3 partition like XOFS or BootStar could do. Basically, I want to pick a bootloader that will continue being viable long into the future so I don't have to keep learning new bootloaders ;)

references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ask_doctor/why_2tb_ceiling

D0s4d1 (talk) 06:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)Keila
 * Just do it! 2.102.78.252 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:58, 30 June 2011 (UTC).

BootIt Next Generation replaced by BootIt Bare Metal
TeraByte have replaced BootIt Next Generation with BootIt Bare Metal (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm and http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm). I don't know enough about BootItBM to replace the BING table row. BootItBM uses GRUB, GRUB2 or LILO to boot Linux (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/category.php?id=20). Nh5h (talk) 05:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Plop
As useful as Plop is, it doesn't support all USB devices, just USB mass storage devices (hard drives, thumbdrives [that report as mass storage], card readers); USB floppy drives and CD/DVD drives are not supported. (http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/usbinfo.html)

GPT
The article assumes that you have a MBR disk, although modern drives "are/will be" GPT disks. Boot managers are also used for GPT disks. Some boot-loaders like GRUB-pc (GRUB2) have a special partition type called BIOS-GRUB in this case which allows the BIOS version of GRUB to reside on a GPT partition table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:8B5A:F6E0:EC49:4C1D:33F2:4C49 (talk) 14:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

--Mofoq (talk) 05:05, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

About Das U-Boot and RedBoot
You have mentioned that none of these Bootloaders support SquashFS, a read-only compressed file system mostly used in firmwares of embedded file-systems. As an important example, OpenWRT mostly uses SquashFS and/or JFFS2 as its root partition, while using U-Boot or RedBoot as its bootloader.

What I doubt is whether none of these bootloaders support SquashFS? Then how OpenWRT uses it for loading its SquashFS partition. (I think I read somewhere in OpenWRT wiki that U-Boot is not aware of root file system and it only loads Kernel which then mounts SquashFS/JFFS2 partition.) Anyway I think someone should check whether these bootloaders and even other bootloaders support SquashFS or not? --digitsm (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

uefi bootloaders
are things like clover, rEFIt, chamaleon, xpc bootloaders considered for this list?

Suggest spliting Can boot *BSD into separated BSD variants
Different BSD variants, such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc., have very different kernel image format, bootloaders support status vary; combining them into a single *BSD column makes describing this Can boot support status much harder. Low power (talk) 06:26, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

COI disclosure
I should've done this earlier, but a month ago I made an edit to this article, adding Limine to the list. I'd like to disclose that I have been in contact with the main maintainer of this project. In addition, I'd also like to disclose that since making the edit, I have made a minor contribution to Limine. This is however not a retraction of my edit.

I apologize for not disclosing this earlier. I didn't think it was significant enough, but now that I made a contribution to the project, I thought it was necessary to disclose this. --Lukflug (talk) 17:06, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Request to add wolfBoot row to Other features table
Tim-Weller-wolfSSL (talk) 21:36, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Specific text to be added or removed:
 * Add a new row to the Other features table for wolfBoot with following column values:
 * Name: wolfBoot
 * Advanced command: No
 * Scriptable: No
 * Supported architecture: ARM, RISC-V, PowerPC
 * Supported executable: binary
 * Supported protocol: No
 * Supported decompression: No
 * Others: Open-source, OS-agnostic (run along-side RTOS, Linux or bare-metal), ARM TrustZone-M support, Hardware Security Module support (including TPM 2.0), Integrity and authenticity verification of firmware images. Roll-back to previous image, Encryption, Self-update
 * Reason for the change:
 * The wolfBoot product is mentioned in the General information table, but is not mentioned in any other table. The table that makes the most sense for an embedded-oriented boot-loader like wolfBoot is in the Other features table, where architecture support and other features may be mentioned.
 * References supporting change:
 * https://www.wolfssl.com/products/wolfboot/ - Official wolfBoot product page
 * https://embeddedcomputing.com/technology/security/product-of-the-week-wolfboot-secure-bootloader - 3rd-party discussion of wolfBoot
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Go ahead: I have reviewed these proposed changes and suggest that you go ahead and make the proposed changes to the page. PK650 (talk) 07:20, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank-you for your time and approval! I have made the proposed edits.  Note: I realized that I had omitted x86 from the list of Supported architectures, so added that to the changes made...  I didn't think that would be a contentious addition, but if it is, please let me know and I will promptly remove x86 and open a separate, specific paid-contributor edit request for that change.  Thank-you again for your time and attention. Tim-Weller-wolfSSL (talk) 20:51, 16 January 2023 (UTC)