Why rEFInd is not a main option instead of a GRUB?

General system Newbie
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So judging by my short superficial research:

  • rEFInd is simpler to install
  • Simpler to configure
  • Simpler in common
  • Has nearly same or a little bit more features than GRUB
  • Looks pretty out of the box, but also easy to customize
  • Supports x86 and ARM architectures
    • GRUB2 supports also MIPS, Sparc, PowerPC, RISC-V.
  • Seems to be less prone to breakages
  • Automatically detects other installed OSs.
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Fair question, I’ve thought about using rEFInd myself. Few issues I see though:

  • It’s UEFI only. BIOS based systems, and older, buggier UEFI implementations will need a seperate bootloader (probably still GRUB).
  • It’s not widely used. That means a narrow test/bug-detection base, and a smaller community to get help from
  • It’s fairly new and still a pretty low version number. This relates back to wide usage in that there might still be outstanding, undetected bugs.

Now, I would be willing to use this as a test…though I’d probably keep a n EFI entry around for grub and maybe an EFISTUB kernel so I’m not dependent on rEFInd if it breaks. It does look nice, seems easy to configure, and can be integrated with bootable BTRFS snapshots…and also detect inserted bootable media so you can select them to boot (essentially replacing the UEFI boot menu).

It’s still something to consider I guess, but I can see good reasons why not to consider it as a default as well. On the other hand, you can always choose to cut over your own install. A few others on here have done so, and I’m still considering it myself…but I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now and for some reason I keep procrastinating…probably because grub is still working and I refuse to update it.

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Another topic about getting rid of grub. . .

I feel like the hamster on the wheel. wheeeeeeeeeeeeee

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:man_facepalming: pls no another pointless thread . if want use rEFInd ,systemd or grub pls do .
no more need say .

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No one is forcing you to answer or to even get an attention to it, the only pointless thing here is your ranting.

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I scrolled about hundred of posts on the forum with a keyword “rEFInd”, and found literally only one post about comparing rEFInd and systemd-boot speed.

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We’ve had this same topic about a dozen times in the last week since grub broke.

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Can you clarify “is not a main option”? Do you mean why it isn’t popular in general or why it isn’t being offered as an option right now?

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Both, why it’s not so popular and why Arch and as I know most of the other Linux distros are coming with a GRUB out of the box instead of rEFInd.
UEFI is here for a 20 years now and nearly all new motherboards have it.

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This is true. UEFI is the standard on new hardware. So is secure boot but lets not go there! :rofl:

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Because it isn’t shipped by default on that many distros.

Also, why is chocolate more popular than vanilla?

Arch doesn’t come with grub out of the box

Because they choose to.

The why is an unanswerable question. In the end, refind isn’t better in all ways. It has pros and cons. Same thing with grub, systemd-boot and every other option.

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In fairness, it’s one of the out-of-the-box options in the archinstall script and the one they recommend on their Wiki for BIOS setups and if people plan to use BTRFS snapshots.

And chocolate being more popular than vanilla is one of the great injustices of the world. The other is that more of the world doesn’t know about sweet purple yams (ube) though. :philippines:

And now I’ll shut up, since the thread was marked “solved” already. :slight_smile:

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Screenshot 2022-09-04 at 19-21-00 Arch boot process - ArchWiki
Screenshot 2022-09-04 at 19-21-00 Arch boot process - ArchWiki949Ă—1891 282 KB

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_boot_process#Boot_loader

If you look at this list… it is very clear why grub is still the most used bootloader it can handle everything :wink:

Not 100% because in some cases the list is may not 100% latest information…

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Cheaper, pretty sure there’s also some biochemical stuff behind it that makes it more addictive and desirable.

Cannot disagree that a lot of the thing have no reason why and they are as they now for mostly “just because”. Though there’s always at least a little bit of a reason behind it.

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i want to try that now… i hate vanilla :wink:

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AFAIK very few boards/PCs manufactured before 2010s have UEFI support. Also they are not spec-compliant. Many people run EndeavourOS to give old PCs life, including 10+ year old ones with BIOS.
GRUB simply handles most boot stuations well, so it is prefered on most distros and handling multiple bootloaders is hard for maintainets.

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Hmm … I like vanilla. EOS that is! :laughing:

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There’s patches for ext4 encryption.
And a common solution for any filesystem is just to make boot as a separated non-encrypted partition.

Quite sad that nearly all of the Web servers and other ones are running linux and at least I cannot find a proper one statistical data about which technology is more prone to breakeges, exploits, faster, etc. Not only in topic of a bootloaders but and the other ones.

So as I see now, GRUB is more popular because it’s was more popular before and so the cycle closes on itself. + Better support for encryption, architectures and legacy BIOS.

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I dunno, I personally had tinkered with linux installation on a few mini laptops from a 2008-2009 and cash register from 2007, I’m unsure but I think all of them already had UEFI.

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at least better documented and easy to handle and yes the good old habituation :wink:

It should be an option to use but not easy to implement in a secure way into a GUI installer framework…