On Thu, 27 Aug 2015, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 14:19:29 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: > > > For those of us with multiple Linux installations on a disk, that's a > > pretty big reason to stick with grub-legacy. > > Actually, that's a good scenario for GRUB2. grub2-mkconfig can detect > all Linux installations on a system, not just the running one, so you > only need one GRUB to boot everything. That's why distro installers are > so much better at setting up Linux dual booting these days, because GRUB2 > makes it simple for them. >
It's true that grub2-mkconfig does Linux detection well but the problem with one grub and multiple distros is the need to manually regenerate the config. I give you the following scenario: Gentoo + another binary distro (say Fedora). Whichever one manages the grub config can regenerate it on updates. On gentoo you'd do that manually (post-install hooks?), Fedora would run grub2-mkconfig on kernel updates. But what happens when the other one (not responsible for the config) updates in a way that affects booting...? You end up with an inconsistant config. To regenerate you need to boot into the config-managing-distro or atleast chroot. But the worst thing is you have to review all updates to find out if the config needs changing. I much prefer chainloading and giving each distro free reign over their own boot loader. That way they can pretend they're the boss and work the way they were intended to and I can supervise things from gentoo.
