A question about lilo - and it's necessity.

[Derek Neighbors]

> > 	I thought I was reading something (sometime, somewhere) that if
> > you don't multi-boot, or boot to different kernels you could get away
> > without intstalling lilo.  This sounds strange, but can it be done?
> 
> Um, maybe :). You need something to boot from. On a hard drive in an x86
> it's a boot loader. There are multiple boot loaders available. If you're
> unhappy with lilo look at grub.

They were probably refering to GRUB.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/

GRUB has some nice things like:

Support multiple executable formats. 
Support non-Multiboot OS's. 
Load multiple modules. 
Support a human-readable configuration file. 
Menu interface. 
Flexible command-line interface. 
Support multiple filesystem types. 
Support automatic decompression. 
Access data on any installed device. 
Geometry translation independent. 
Detect all installed RAM. 
Support Logical Block Address (LBA) mode. 
Download OS images from a network. 
Support diskless systems. 
Support remote terminals. 

Here is an article that might be similar to what you read and that has
links to tutorials as using GRUB is a  bit different than lilo.

http://www.signalground.com/article/3159776679

Derek