Limine is a portable

boot loader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer and booting an operating system. If it also provides an interactive menu with multiple boot choices then it's o ...

and the reference implementation for the Limine boot protocol. Multiboot2, chainloading, and the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

boot protocols are also supported. Limine supports the ISO-9660 and

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

filesystems. Limine aims to provide a more robust alternative to bootloaders like

GNU GRUB GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, commonly referred to as GRUB) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a use ...

, as well as its own boot protocol as an alternative to the

Multiboot specification The Multiboot specification is an open standard describing how a boot loader can load an x86 operating system kernel. The specification allows any compliant boot-loader implementation to boot any compliant operating-system kernel. Thus, it all ...

, with the goal of reducing the amount of work needed for a kernel developer to get a workable 64-bit environment once booted. Limine is packaged by several

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s, being offered by

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

, where it is an option in archinstall, as well as included in EasyOS (a derivative of

Puppy Linux Puppy Linux is a family of light-weight Linux distributions that focus on ease of use and minimal memory footprint. The entire system can be run from random-access memory (RAM) with current versions generally taking up about 600 MB (64-bit), 3 ...

), CachyOS, and

Chimera Linux Chimera Linux is a Linux distribution striving for the minimum complexity of system configuration while retaining and expanding on the flexibility common to general purpose Linux based systems. It uses musl as its libc implementation, userland to ...

. Limine is also used by

Cosmos The cosmos (, ; ) is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. The cosmos is studied in cosmologya broad discipline covering ...

and supported by SerenityOS.

See also

References

Further reading