Conclusions

There exist many boot loaders for Linux and no single boot loader is the best in all circumstances.

I would recommend to use the following boot loaders:

• For general purpose hard disk installations, use either LILO or GRUB.
  • GRUB has more features for recovery, but these can be dangerous as well. Of course you can protect the command line with a password.
  • LILO comes standard with all distributions. If you just want to install Linux (maybe together with DOS/Windows), use LILO. On the other hand, if you install different Linux distributions, different operating systems and do frequent kernel compilation, GRUB is absolutely for you.
  • LILO can boot from RAID systems while GRUB can't.
• SYSLINUX is ideal for diskette installation. It is compact, once it is installed, you can just copy files to DOS disks and it supports overformatted diskettes.
• For CD-ROM installations we could use diskette images with SYSLINUX, but ISOLINUX may be worth a try.
• A diskette with just GRUB installed and nothing else, can be a great rescue tool for machines that went unbootable. Using the GRUB diskette, you can mix and match kernels and initial RAM disk images from other diskettes and you can boot any kernel on any hard disk partition.