2011/12/16 Matthew Gyurgyik <pyther@pyther.net>:
I agree with Thomas.
1.) There are better alternatives to installing grub on a partition (see Thomas' mail).
3.) Don't use grub-legacy (not supported upstream or maintained). Use syslinux (installer) or grub2 (manually).
I appreciate these comments and gather syslinux might be a better solution than grub, and will look into it. However, I would like to point out that grub (legacy) is still the recommended bootloader solution in the beginner's guide, and in the installer isos. Furthermore, grub legacy is the one in core, whereas grub2 is in extra. I think that it is prematurate to cripple the installation of a bootloader just because it is not maintained upstream, until we have a better replacement. If really grub legacy is bad, then we should phase it out and replace it with a better one, which should be the new default. Why not replace grub legacy with grub2 in the core repository and in the installer?
Installing grub to a partition is an uncommon setup and used by few users, Those who really want to install grub to a partition can do so manually.
Well, that is against the KISS principle. The fact it is uncommon is irrelevant for a distro like Arch, which is not suppose to hide options for their own good (especially when users report having used the partition installation with no problem). Eric