Grub2 vs Systemd

Hi, I’m going to install Endeavour on my brother’s computer but it says to put Systemd on boot, as I’ve never done it before, I’d like to know if for a person who has a medium-high level of knowledge of Linux and Win2 it would be better to put Systemd on it.

From what I’ve read and seen, the latter is simple and sometimes recommended for novice users.

I appeal to your opinions on using Systemd and Grub2 (and I’ll take advantage of this to install Endevour on my laptop).

Greetings and thanks.

If you are setting up a dual-boot with Linux and Windows for a 3rd party, I would probably use grub.

If you are using Linux only, I would use systemd-boot. It is simpler, less prone to failure and fully automated.

You absolutely can use systemd-boot to dual-boot Windows and Linux but it is a bit simpler with grub unless you modify your partition layout.

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Thanks for the answer, I’ll propose it to my brother and let him decide based on my argument.

Thanks and greetings.

One caveat to systemd-boot: it requires kernels and initrd images to be on the ESP partition, so if you install a lot of kernels, make sure that the ESP partition is BIIIIIIIG.

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at least 1GB, i agree. I forget what the default is in the installer cause I usually make the esp myself

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Another benefit to Grub over SystemD is the ability to mount BTRFS snapshots and boot into them. That is a big help when trying to recover your system. I highly recommend going that route if you are a first time user. I can’t even count how many times those snapshots helped recover a mistake I made.

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I only have linux-lts and linux-zen installed, with main and fallback initrd per kernel. ESP is already at 700M. So 3-4G at least for real enthusiasts, I guess.

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Something is wrong there. You should take a look and make sure you don’t have something extra lying around. Either that or your initrds are HUGE for some reason.

initrds it is, for sure. I’m not sure though if I ever touched their generation rules.
.rwxr-xr-x 131M root 31 Oct 19:57 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.11.5-zen1-1-zen/initrd
.rwxr-xr-x 88M root 1 Nov 15:29 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.6.59-1-lts/initrd
.rwxr-xr-x 203M root 31 Oct 19:57 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.11.5-zen1-1-zen/initrd-fallback
.rwxr-xr-x 153M root 1 Nov 15:29 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.6.59-1-lts/initrd-fallback
.rwxr-xr-x 14M root 31 Oct 19:57 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.11.5-zen1-1-zen/linux
.rwxr-xr-x 13M root 1 Nov 15:29 /efi/52729fb7f4f04aa5b1537a8b5579df02/6.6.59-1-lts/linux

Here are mine for comparison:

-rw-r----- 1 root root 25M Oct 28 14:30 6.9.7-arch1-1/initrd
-rw-r----- 1 root root 56M Oct 28 14:30 6.9.7-arch1-1/initrd-fallback
-rw-r----- 1 root root 13M Oct 28 14:30 6.9.7-arch1-1/linux

I am guess you are using nvidia which is probably part of it but why are you fallbacks 70MB more than the normal ones.

You can use lsinitrd to see what is inside them taking up all the space.

Make sure you have this in one of the files in /etc/dracut.conf.d/:

omit_dracutmodules+=" network cifs nfs nbd brltty "
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I do use nvidia. And I do use NFS mounts, so not sure if nfs should be excluded from initrd. Thanks for pointing me to ‘lsinitrd’, will take a look at that.

Unless you are booting off those nfs mounts or require them at boot-time for some reason, you don’t need nfs support in your initrd.

I also use NFS mounts quite extensively.

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