LinuxGazette: The GNU GRUB Boot Loader

"A boot loader is a program that resides in the starting sectors of a disk, e.g., the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard disk. After testing the system during bootup, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) tranfers control to the MBR if the system is set to be booted from there. Then the program residing in MBR gets executed. This program is called the boot loader. Its duty is to transfer control to the operating system, which will then proceed with the boot process."

"There are a lot of boot loader programs available, including GNU GRUB (Grand Unified Boot Loader), Bootmanager, LILO (LInux LOader), NTLDR (boot loader for Windows NT systems), etc. I've chosen to discuss GNU GRUB and how to use it."

"GRUB is a very powerful boot loader that can load a variety of operating systems such as Windows, DOS, Linux, GNU Hurd, *BSD, etc."

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• FreeOS.com: GRUB: Multi-boot without LILO! (Feb 10, 2001)