(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
i think it and most the other debian distros use lilo bootloader. until pclinuxos i didn't know lilo wouldn't intall over top of grub. so none of them would boot after install.
i had to use a dos disk to clear the MBR to install the bootloader. i guess i could go back and try all those that failed to load.