How about this? A single block boot loader that understands the ext2 filesystem, so can load the kernel without having to "update-grub": https://github.com/jha

How about this? A single block boot loader that understands the ext2 filesystem, so can load the kernel without having to "update-grub": https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/boot https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/boot Bonus: it tries to read tracks at a time to make booting off of floppies faster (I wrote it in the 90s..)