“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.“
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.