(E)LILO was discontinued a decade ago and removed from Debian.

Posted Sep 26, 2025 2:33 UTC (Fri) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
In reply to: (E)LILO was discontinued a decade ago and removed from Debian. by WolfWings
Parent article: An unstable Debian stable update

I didn't say Debian packaged ELILO. This sub-topic is about SystemD components in general, not about Debian in particular. I said ELILO still works, because I made a dual-boot system with Windows about three weeks ago, let the Slackware-Current installer install ELILO, and it worked.

I also didn't say ELILO was updated or supported. But, since you mentioned it, I'll just say that I generally don't whether software is updated or supported, and I generally do care if it works.

Regarding boot menus, I've found the UEFI boot menu available with F12 to be sufficient, so I don't see a need for a separate program to provide that feature. Given all of the over-engineered nonsense built into UEFI, I'm pleased that the resulting mega-kludge can at least display a better boot menu than its predecessor.

But I'm still looking forward to CSMWrap being developed to completion.

(E)LILO was discontinued a decade ago and removed from Debian.

Posted Sep 26, 2025 2:55 UTC (Fri) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (1 responses)

> I didn't say Debian packaged ELILO. This sub-topic is about SystemD components in general, not about Debian in particular.

This comments section as a whole is about "Debian in particular", though. The commenter you were replying to is also, presumably, a user of Debian in particular.

So when you post a comment on an article (about Debian) replying to another commenter (a user of Debian) saying "Why would someone need [systemd's] bootloader? <...> ELILO still works" and then claim that it does not matter that ELILO is not, in fact, available in Deban, then you are simply being obtuse. HTHs.

(E)LILO was discontinued a decade ago and removed from Debian.

Posted Sep 26, 2025 7:47 UTC (Fri) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Ah, didn't realize WolfWings was both the replier and topic originator. His original comment didn't specify Debian, but I guess he is personally mostly interested in SystemD non-core components on Debian.

In that case, I expect compiling ELILO on Debian would be straightforward, and I also expect the old .deb file from whatever the last release to include ELILO was would probably still work. However, I don't use Debian and so have not tested that.