rEFInd vs. GRUB2

[SiliconWizard]

I'm tempted to use rEFInd rather than GRUB2 for my next install. Does any of you have any experience with it and any opinion?

[SiliconWizard]

Ok I guess nobody here has ever used rEFInd. I'll have to be the guinea pig.

[DiTBho]

Sorry. I am working on yaboot, which is dead on powerpc.
(Broken code, does no more compile)

What about rEFInd? 

[SiliconWizard]

rEFInd works strictly in UEFI mode, so given that you seem to work primarily with older or more exotic stuff, you are probably not likely to have any use for it at this point.

Haven't gotten around to doing this install yet. It will be part of setting up my workstation with Linux and moving away from Windows for work. (I have several machines with Linux, including my laptop, but so far I am still on Windows on my main workstation, but this year should be the year of the switch for professional uses.)

I bought a new SSD on which I'll install Linux, and I'll keep Windows on its own SSD (for the time being.) I plan on using rEFInd as the boot manager, installed on the Linux SSD in order to have completely separate and autonomous installs. rEFInd should be able to chain boot Windows on the other SSD, so the Linux SSD will be set as the primary boot device, but the benefit of this scheme is that each SSD separately will still be able to boot.

So, this is the plan.

[magic]

GRUB2 always looked like a complex and fragile clusterfuck to me.
I stayed on GRUB1 with BIOS mode so far and I will surely research every available alternative when the day comes I need to boot natively on UEFI.

[DiTBho]

yep, I have the same feeling about grup2, used as replacement for Yaboot on PowerMacs.
I don't like it.

At the moment I am thinking about fixing Yaboot, but also I'd like to resume my old Intel Core2 Duo laptop, and rEFInd would be interesting.

At least to know about

[BradC]

I run rEFInd on my Mac laptop, PC desktop and 2 PC servers.

I always found Grub an incredibly flexible pain in the arse and my biggest bugbear was forgetting to regenerate the config file after installing a new kernel. rEFInd "just works".

Of course these machines are all new enough to work with an entirely EFI boot chain (Laptop is 2015, servers are 2017, desktop is last year).

[SiliconWizard]

GRUB2 has been working fine for me for years, but I do agree it's a bit of a pain. I use Arch as my main distribution and pacman does all that's needed when updating the kernel, so not a big problem. Although maybe you're talking not just about kernel updates, but installing a new kernel alongside an existing one rather than replace it.

The annoyance OTOH is to update GRUB2 itself - then you need to reinstall it, which is a pain.

I was looking for alternatives and rEFInd looked like a decent one, glad someone is confirming.

[BradC]

You can install rEFInd alongside Grub anyway and switch between the two. You can even use rEFInd to chain to Grub.

[DiTBho]

I want "LiLO"