Ubuntu

grub-pc vs. grub

Asked by John Winterton

My system has grub-pc installed. Yelp makes references to grub, and the system console wants me to install if if I type the grub command. If I do this, apt will remove grub-pc. Will is make any difference in the operation of my machine? Will it run at all if I replace grub-pc with grub?

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peter b (b1pete) said : 		#1

grub-pc is also called grub2; it is the default bootloader beginning with ubuntu lucid release; it is at v 1.98; if you run

grub-install -v

command you'll see this.

grub on the other hand is also called grub legacy - self explanatory.

grub-pc can be replaced by grub ; the procedure is described in

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Changing%20or%20Moving%20GRUB%202
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1298932

before proceeding with replacing grub2 with grub please become v v familiar with the replacement process described - if unsure please DO NOT ACT - you may render your pc unbootable. if you're not 'conversant' with what happens 'behind the scenes' during boot I'd strongly recommend to leave existing working grub-pc ALONE.

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John Winterton (jwinterton) said : 		#2

Thanks. I really didn't want to do that, but I do need to clean up the number of kernels grub is retaining as it seems to be slowing down my boot considerably. I WILL NOT replace grub-pc. I am an old O/S type, but the learning curve on this system is more than i want to climb since I am now retired. Is there a quick way to get grub-pc to stop retaining every kernel version it has ever seen?

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peter b (b1pete) said : 		#3

see the url below

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/122542

it is my understanding that there is some movement/discussion at grub2 developers level that a future release will retain only two kernels; I think it is v good idea.

btw. I have quite a few releases installed with quite a few kernels each and the penalty for reading all this is at best marginal - there'll always be only one kernel installed. the cpu and ram speed and size along with HD speed and size have a far greater bearing in getting the os booted and loaded. the latter are v inexpensive these days for hware upgrades provided that the matherboard can live with them.

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John Winterton (jwinterton) said : 		#4

Yes,but try being retired on a very small pension, and hardware costs become significant. I am holding my system together with bailing wire and spit, at the moment, until I can get enough cash for a new box.

Surprisingly, I replaced by mouse today, and things are better, but not miraculous. I think the old one was sending in showers of interrupts at times, especially during boot, and this was causing some significant delays of some kind. Of course, I could be wrong if the bootloader masks the mouse's interrupts.

One of these days I am going to replace this box with something newer. It was built in 2001/2 time frame, and while I like the AMD processor, the NVIDIA GeForce2 chip set is getting tired. Besides, I'd like to be able to have more than one MB of RAM.

I spend a lot of time playing SimCity 4 with wine, and it beats the box to death at times. This game believes everything is in memory. One page fault or glitch of any kind and it crashes to the desktop. However, since I solved the GPU memory problem I was having with it, it is running fine now. The guys at winehq do fine work.

Thanks for the ear and the ideas. I feel more at home with UBUNTU than ever. I've been on it since 7.04, and have now junked all my Microsoft s/w. I don't even have disks for it any more. Now, if I only had time and inclination to study up on Linux. *sigh* :)

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John Winterton (jwinterton) said : 		#5

OOPS. s/by mouse/my mouse/