During the boot process, the boot sector is read to obtain the bootstrap for the operating system. In the case of DOS, the Master Boot record or boot sector is read, and then COMMAND.COM is loaded. COMMAND.COM is DOS’ kernel.

Although usually the boot system is set up when the Linux installation process is followed, you may want to alter Linux’s boot system. Depending on your requirements and machine hard drive configuration, you can take one of several approaches. The following sections look at a few of the typical configuration examples to show how you can modify the boot process. These sections begin by explaining the process to follow to install LILO manually, although you can often perform these processes automatically when installing the Linux software. This section looks at the automated installation process and its options later on. For now, though, the details of each alternative should help you decide how to install LILO on your system.