From: João Jerónimo Barata de Oliveira
In my opinion, the ideal boot loader: MBR boot code (446 bytes)... loads some contents of the 1st cylinder of the disk (after the MBR sector, it's usually empty)
Contents of that space: configuration of the boot loader (no config reading from partitions while running this first stage boot loader); executable that shows the menu accordingly to the config it should read; some routines (possibly modules) for loading specific OSs, becuase they aren't all started the same way; and parhaps an image in some format...
Seems to me the config would be very hard to maintain. You can't use the "normal" OS utilities like editors to change the config, since the config file is not located on a filesystem.
That is, of course, also making ReactOS multiboot-compilant if it isn't already (It doesn't look like that)...
The kernel isn't multiboot-compliant but FreeLdr is. The nett result is still that you can boot ReactOS from a multiboot-compliant loader (like Grub).
But I think you are following the same path as Microsoft (i.e. I am the main OS, chainload to my partition and then I can load other OSs if you want)
No, we happily co-exist with Grub.
Gé van Geldorp.