Grub or Systemd-boot?

Gee - that sounds like an add for rEFInd. Simple, and doesn’t need regenerating all the time :grin: It can even look good - for your personal values of good of course…

refind isn’t really simple at all in the sense that systemd-boot is.

It is the opposite of simple, it is advanced and feature rich. It is, however, easy to use.

However it’s easy to install and setup. I like rEFInd but i have never tried systemd boot except on distros that already use it.

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Of course, I am not disagreeing with that in any way. :innocent:

I was more just clarifying the difference in the meaning of the word simple as it relates to systemd-boot. Personally, I don’t use systemd-boot because it is easy. I use it because I like the simplicity of it. Because it lacks complexity, it requires very little knowledge to troubleshoot. Also, once you learn how it works, there isn’t really anything left to learn. There is file with some overall settings which is usually less than 5 lines long. Than there is an entry file which has a handful of config for each entry. Once you know those two things, that is pretty much everything you need to know about systemd-boot. There really is very little beyond that. Just a command line tool with a handful of options you can use to install it or check the status.

Compare that to something like refind. Refind is very easy to setup, it practically sets itself up. In my experience, it is also far more resilient than grub. That being said, when it does break, troubleshooting it takes more knowledge than something like systemd-boot. On the other hand, refind has much more functionality than other bootloaders. It can boot virtually anything. It is one of the few bootloaders than can easily handle a mixed legacy/UEFI environment.

In the end, it all comes down to personal preference. Asking, “which is the best bootloader?” is a bit like asking “which is the best filesystem?” or “which is the best DE?”. They are questions without answers. :nerd_face:

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How about best distribution? :rofl:

btw… :upside_down_face:

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I use the best BTW. It’s called eos…EndeavourOS. It’s kinda like …Arch! Maybe?

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Well - I would question the difficulty of troubleshooting - as there are only 2 config files. One is general, and the other is duplicated per bootable system - and essentially provides a venue for kernel parameters (and fallbacks). Not tough to maintain. It can’t be - I maintain it on my systems! :grin:

One of the main advantages over grub, to me, is that there is only ONE of them… instead of the myriad (and too often incompatible) flavours of grub found in the wild. Usually they all will boot themselves correctly (with limits!) - but many fall down when adding os-prober finds. It even can boot grub for a particular system where that has advantages… for instance I have rEFInd call grub to boot Garuda because of its btrfs and TimeShift integration. Haven’t set up the equivalent on an EnOS build yet, but it might apply there too.

It is a relative statement, compared to systemd-boot it is more complicated/harder to troubleshoot. It has to be more complicated. It has more functionality.

That comment was in no way meant to be negative. I think refind is a great tool.

Okay so explain to me one thing. I use rEFInd with triple boot. But i boot from each from the grubx64.efi file. Does this mean i couldn’t remove grub because it still uses grub to boot?

Edit: Not to go off topic here.

You still need grub hanging around for that setup - but as long as you disable os-prober (let each system only tend to its own knitting) you are likely to see grub at its best! :grin:

I guess I was thinking of ‘complicated’ in a slightly different sense - you can do as little as with systemd-boot if you wish. The rest of the functionality is not in need of configuration unless desired! Kind of like how Linux is complicated…if YOU want it to be! (nod to Gentoo addicts…and others :grin:)

On my rEFInd set up triple boot i have os-prober removed on all three desktops. rEFInd is installed on the first drive and i use the grubx64.efi to boot each deskstop on each drive separately.

Edit: I’m sure i could do something similar with systemd but would be more work to set it up i assume as i am not familiar with it.

@ricklinux, it’s easy to setup systemd (as @dalto pointed out), but as I complained earlier, if the distro doesn’t maintain the setup, then it’s a drag (and manually unless you script something out). Of course that also has to do with how much you update, whether your kernel updates have the same name, etc.
Personally, I’m too much of a distro hopper to maintain my own tools…so if the distro doesn’t support it, I tend to be lazy (and complain) and just use grub. That doesn’t mean I don’t think grub is a horrid beast and should be slain on sighting.

It doesn’t look easy to set up compared to rEFInd and the fact is i can use rEFInd to boot either the grubx64.efi as i am doing with triple boot or i can boot from the vmlinuz-linux image. Mind you it did take me a while to wrap my mind around rEFInd. Knowing what i know now on using it; it is simple. I’m probably going to experiment some more with removing grub entirely. But on the other hand using it this way …i never have any grub issues. So why bother.

Some people think learning things is somewhat valuable.

While I understand what you are saying, that isn’t really the point.

The elegance of simplicity is that it doesn’t have the complexity to begin with. It is, of course, true that you can use a more advanced solution without using all of it’s functionality but that doesn’t actually make it simple.

Again, I am not advocating for or against anything, just trying to clarify the point. I think most people don’t care about the complexity of their bootloader. Nothing wrong that. For those that do, systemd-boot is a great solution.

To be even more specific, refind is a separate piece of software that sits on top or your OSes and manages booting for all of them. That is the complete opposite of what I want in most cases. I want as little as possible sitting on top and each distro to manage it’s own booting with minimal outside support. But that is just my personal preference, it doesn’t make it a better solution in any way.

It doesn’t look that easy. Why does one have to change the /boot/efi when it already exists why can’t the systemd install work off of what’s already there. I’ve looked at the tutorial and compared to rEFInd it’s not easier. Simpler how it works? Maybe? I will try it when i get some time on a vm.

Technically speaking, it can. It would just be an odd thing to do. The tutorial I wrote assumes you want a logical install when you are done but moving your efi partition to /efi or /boot is not a requirement of systemd-boot. Putting your efi partition at /boot/efi really only makes sense for grub.

That being said, systemd-boot isn’t for everyone. If you don’t care about what it offers, why bother switching?

I’m just trying to understand how it works because i have a very good knowledge how UEFI is set up. I just installed xfce in a vm. I removed os-prober and grub and boot from the vmlinux-linux image only. So that confirms for me that if i remove grub i can only boot this way. Once grub is removed it can’t boot from the grubx64.efi. So now i will try to figure out the systemd on another vm as i want to see if it’s better on my triple boot setup or not. Currently i am using the grubx64.efi to boot them still in rEFInd. REFInd is really not a bootloader. It is a boot manager! Supposedly?

On my main workstation, I quadruple boot with it. Arch/Fedora/Manjaro/Nixos :nerd_face:

That being said, you will need to convert all the Linux distros to it. It can boot Windows on it’s own if that is one of the things you are triple-booting.