GAG is a GNU GPL boot loader for x86 computers. It doesn't need its own partition

Disk partitioning

Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks. Partitions are also termed "slices" for operating systems based on BSD, Solaris or GNU Hurd...

 — it installs directly to the boot sector

Boot sector

A boot sector or boot block is a region of a hard disk, floppy disk, optical disc, or other data storage device that contains machine code to be loaded into random-access memory by a computer system's built-in firmware...

 of Hard disk

Hard disk

A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...

 or floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

 which allows it to survive to repartitioning or formatting. It is distributed as a bootable disk image, which makes it fully operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

-independent. It can be installed from a CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

 or from a linux terminal too (this last method allows to install it in a USB pendrive).

GAG works on x86 processor with standard VGA graphic adapter or compatible (it can't be properly run under Hercules

Hercules Graphics Card

The Hercules Graphics Card was a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. which, through its popularity, became a widely supported display standard. It was common on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor . It supported one high resolution text mode and...

, CGA

Color Graphics Adapter

The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....

 or EGA

Enhanced Graphics Adapter

The Enhanced Graphics Adapter is the IBM PC computer display standard specification which is between CGA and VGA in terms of color and space resolution. Introduced in October 1984 by IBM shortly after its new PC/AT, EGA produces a display of 16 simultaneous colors from a palette of 64 at a...

).

GAG aims to be an easy-to-use boot manager, but allows certain advanced features. It has a classic 3D-looking GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

 driven by a keyboard. It allows to have up to 9 operating systems installed. Every OS (boot partition) has an icon, label and, if needed, password

Password

A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource . The password should be kept secret from those not allowed access....

 protection. Configuration is menu-driven, and can be protected with its own password too.

It allows to hide primary partitions (to avoid OS collisions between C:/D: primary partitions) and auto-choose using timer.

Grub2 incompatibility

Because GAG is a pure chain loading boot loader, it requires a kernel loader to be installed in the superblock of each bootable partition to handle the different filesystems or kernels. This means that users of GNU

GNU

GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

/Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 are required to install LILO

Lilo

Lilo may refer to:People* Lilo , a French actress and singer, the leading lady in the Broadway production of Can-Can* Lilo, nickname of Carmine Galante, American mobster* lilo, nickname of Rob Levin, founder of the freenode IRC network...

 or GRUB in the superblock of the partition in order to be able to boot from GAG; however it seems that installing GRUB2 in a superblock is discouraged. Some people have been able to make this configuration work by running sudo grub-install /dev/sdXX (where XX represents the root partition), however it is not guaranteed to work.

External links

• GAG at Sourceforge