I am always tinkering with my setup. Isn’t that that normal for many linux users, especially Arch users?
I have for many years used GRUB, and have touched on using systemd-boot. I ditched systemd-boot rather quickly because I wanted to be able to list snapshots within GRUB and was happy with that until one day I couldn’t for the life of me get snapshots to restore upon loading one.
So I started looking around; and found Limine, limine-snapper-sync, and Liminie-mkinitcpio-hook
After finding those, I pulled out a spare machine to test doing a clean install with Limine and proceeded to install snapper, and the above packages for syncing, along with snap-pac. I found it quite easy to use. I even tested restoring a snapshot. It was flawless for my use case.
So I then converted my laptop from GRUB to limine, and then my gaming rig.
I am quite happy with it.
What bootloader do you use, and why?
I don’t use a bootloader anymore. I was using systemd-boot for a while, but switched to just use efi stub a couple of years ago. I just use the efi boot menu if I need to use a different partition to boot from, otherwise my system just bits immediately and skips the bootloader step.
Never went that route but I may try it on akother machine.
Same with me. I didn’t feel the need to choose or confirm something every boot on day to day use. If I need to boot somewhere else, then I could always go to the BIOS/UEFI
It’s recommended for CachyOS, in fact the option was made default in the installer within the last month because grub was stuck in default while limine was being recommended first and foremost in the installation wiki.
I like rEFInd because it actually checks for devices at boot time. Slide in a bootable flash drive and it appears in the menu, no rebuilding process required.
GRUB because of the snapper support. I’ll probably try Liminie next time I do a rebuild
That was why I used GRUB. But struggled to get it to allow me to restore from the snapshots I had created.
Efistub. It’s the fastest, and has the fewest display transitions with plymouth.
I do still have grub for booting btrfs snashots, available as a separate UEFI entry.




