This page is about migrating GRUB Legacy to GRUB 2.
Initial proposal sent by Otavio: http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2007/04/msg00328.html
Improvements
This list skips the obvious about cleaner design, etc etc. Only tangible improvements here.
- update-grub rewrite. Modular design, extensibility, etc. Will now be part of the upstream package.
- GPT: For non-EFI systems, GPT needs patching (see #407338)
- EFI: Mandatory for Intel-Mac. Probably others during lenny life period.
- UTF-8 in menu: Needs unifont-bin (currently in queue/NEW), and latest update-grub upstream patch.
- gettext: Not implemented, should be trivial though.
- LVM / software RAID: Investigate how complete/usable it is.
- powerpc: New port.
- grub.cfg is scriptable.
Regressions
- splash screen: The abstraction layer for using VGA/VBE/whatever is there. There's also a bitmap loader (PNG support being worked on). We just need to figure out how to enable it (maybe the user interface is missing).
- ReiserFS not implemented: being worked on? ask Subdino @ #grub about it
- XFS is implemented, but doesn't work too well: much like GRUB Legacy. Not really a regression in fact ;-).
- CDROM support. Not really important since Debian isn't using GRUB for CD boot atm, but it might be an interesting option for lenny.
- 64-bit detection on x86: needed for multi-arch DVDs.
- grub-reboot
- "hiddenmenu" option
- Weird hardware RAID paths (e.g. /dev/fubar/bazXsY). Check for regressions there (see [grub]/lib/device.c)
- Rescue floppy and CD (i.e. grub-disk package)