Booting Linux With the New EXTLINUX

“If you’ve ever run a Linux LiveCD (or LiveUSB), or booted from
a rescue disk, you’ve probably used a version of SYSLINUX, even if
you didn’t know it at the time. SYSLINUX, the work of H. Peter
Anvin, is a bootloader for Linux which can boot from an MS-DOS FAT
filesystem or create a bootable floppy (very old-school!); its
close cousin ISOLINUX handles booting from CDs and similar media.
SYSLINUX has always been enormously useful for first-time installs,
when you’re often booting from a machine that is currently running
Windows, but until fairly recently, you had to switch to another
bootloader post-install, since SYSLINUX doesn’t handle ext*
filesystems. However, EXTLINUX, a fairly recent addition to the
Syslinux Project, does handle these filesystems (see below), giving
another boot option besides GRUB and LILO for Linux systems. Boot
disks with SYSLINUX and ISOLINUX

“To use SYSLINUX to create a bootable floppy disk is
straightforward: just give it the device name.

syslinux /dev/fd0

“You can then set up the configuration by editing the
syslinux.cfg…”

Complete
Story