Top 10 List of Week 09

1. Is Upstart good?
   When Upstart was first conceived by Canonical, the prevailing system was still sysvinit, which started everything in sequence and more or less stopped after that. Upstart has a model of starting any available job when the event happens. Compare this to systemd, that starts processes that have all the other systems running. Upstart is an interesting topic but mainly historical. You may need it only if you run into old systems. The most common alternative on Linux is now systemd. If you have reservations regarding systemd, you should look for other minimal systems.

2. What is GRUB in Linux?
   The GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) is a bootloader available from the GNU project. A bootloader is very important as it is impossible to start an operating system without it. It is the first program which starts when the program is switched on. The bootloader transfers the control to the operating system kernel. This interface is the most basic GRUB interface but it grants the most control to the user. Using the command line interface, any command can be executed by typing it and then pressing enter. This interface also features some advanced shell features.

3. UEFI vs BIOS: What’s the Difference?
   So you might have heard the acronyms BIOS and UEFI thrown around, especially when trying to switch Operating Systems or messing around with overclocking. And you might know what these acronyms stand for (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and Basic Input/Output System, respectively). But have you ever wondered how they’re used in a computer system? Check this site to see the real differences between UEFI and BIOS.

4. How to Enable Legacy Boot Mode
   On newer Windows 8 PCs using the UEFI or EFI boot standard, many PC manufacturers require you to take certain steps to allow you to boot into recovery tools and non-EFI or non-UEFI operating systems. This guide covers some of the common ways to enable you to boot into legacy mode on your PC or laptop, letting you boot into recovery media and setup CDs for other operating systems like Linux or older versions of Windows. Check this site to see how to enable legacy boot mode on Windows 8 and newer.

5. Understanding and Using Systemd
   systemd is controversial for several reasons: It’s a replacement for something that a lot of Linux users don’t think needs to be replaced, and the antics of the systemd developers have not won hearts and minds. But rather the opposite, as evidenced in this famous LKML thread where Linus Torvalds banned systemd dev Kay Sievers from the Linux kernel. Red Hat is the inventor and primary booster of systemd, so the best distros for playing with it are Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL clones like CentOS and Scientific Linux, and of course good ole Fedora Linux, which always ships with the latest, greatest, and bleeding-edgiest.

6. What is LILO?
   Is Lilo that blue creature from the series Lilo and Stitch? This time, it’s the different Lilo! LILO stands for Linux Loader that is used to load Linux into memory. It can boot operating systems from floppy disks, hard disks, and it does not depend on a specific file system. Lilo handles some tasks such as locate the kernel, identify other supporting programs, load memory and starts the kernel.

7. Introduction to RAID, Concepts of RAID and RAID Levels in Linux
   Watch out for the raid! RAID is a Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks, but nowadays it is called Redundant Array of Independent drives. Earlier it is used to be very costly to buy even a smaller size of disk, but nowadays we can buy a large size of disk with the same amount like before. Raid is just a collection of disks in a pool to become a logical volume. There are two types of Raid, software and hardware.

8. Beginners Guide to Swap Space Management in Linux
   Swap space is used in Linux when there is insufficient physical memory (RAM) on your system to store the data currently being processed. When your system needs more memory, inactive memory pages are written to the disk, freeing up physical memory. Swap space in Linux is either a normal file in the file system, called a swap file, or a separate partition, or a combination of swap partitions and swap files.

9. MBR VS GPT, which is the better choice for your computer?
   MBR VS GPT, which one is better for your computer? How to choose? This article talks about these two difference partition plans - MBR and GPT, and discuss their differences, how to convert disk between MBR and GPT without losing data and how to partition a hard drive to GPT disk. Besides, this guide touches upon basic knowledge about BOIS and EFI and gives samples about MBR and GPT partition.

10. Boot Block in Operating System
    What is a boot block? It is a program at some fixed location on a hard disk, floppy disk or other media, which is loaded when the computer is turned on or rebooted and which controls the next phase of loading the actual operating system. The loading and execution of the boot block is usually controlled by firmware in ROM or PROM.