MEMDISK, emulates a RAM disk for older operating systems like MS-DOS
The project also includes two separate menu systems and a development environment for additional modules.
SYSLINUX and ISOLINUX
SYSLINUX was originally meant for rescue floppy disks, live USBs, or other lightweight environments. ISOLINUX is meant for live CDs and Linux installation CDs.
The SYSLINUX bootloader can be used to boot multiple distributions from a single source such as a USB stick.[2]
A minor complication is involved when booting from compact discs. The El Torito standard allows booting in two different modes:
No emulation – Requires storing the boot information directly on the CD. ISOLINUX is suitable for this mode.
Floppy emulation – Requires storing the boot information in a disk image file suitable for emulating a FAT-formatted floppy disk. SYSLINUX is suitable for this mode.
To have this choice is sometimes useful, since ISOLINUX is vulnerable to BIOS bugs.[which?] For that reason, it is handy to be able to boot using SYSLINUX. This mostly affects computers built before about 1999, and, in fact, for modern computers the "no emulation" mode is generally the more reliable method. Newer[which?] ISOLINUX versions support creation of so-called "hybrid ISO" images, that put both the El Torito boot record of the compact discs and the master boot record of hard disks into an ISO image. This hybrid image could then be written to both a compact disc or a USB flash drive.[3]
EXTLINUX is a general-purpose bootloader, similar to LILO or GRUB. Since Syslinux 4, EXTLINUX is capable of handling Btrfs, FAT, NTFS, UFS/UFS2, and XFS filesystems.
COMBOOT
SYSLINUX can be extended by COMBOOT modules written in C or assembly language. 32-bit modules typically use the .c32filename extension. Version 5 and later do not support 16-bit .com modules.[6]
Hardware Detection Tool (HDT)
Since the 3.74 release, the Syslinux project hosts the Hardware Detection Tool (HDT) project, licensed under the terms of GNU GPL. This tool is a 32-bit module that displays low-level information for any IA-32–compatible system. It provides both a command-line interface and a semi-graphical menu mode for browsing. HDT is also available as a bootable ISO and a 2.88 MB floppy disk image. The last update of HDT was in 2015; it has since been discontinued.[7]
Bresnahan, Christine; Blum, Richard (11 July 2019). CompTIA Linux+ Study Guide — Exam XK0-004. United Kingdom: Wiley. ISBN9781119556039. OCLC1066596041.