Linux may boot using different mechanisms. Booting involves reading and placing in memory a kernel file (often called zImage or vmlinuz), then executing it. While this sounds simple, there are always some quirks to deal with. This is why booting an Operating System is a sort of ``black art.'' Unlike many boot loaders shipped with some other commercial OSs, LILO is fully documented and one the most versatile loaders, by far.
We will first try to describe what is involved, and then tell you what you can do with all that.