Boot Loader Comparison Review: LILO vs. GRUB

In order for the BIOS to load an OS it looks for instructions on the first sector of a hard drive. On the first sector of the hard drive resides the master boot record (MBR), and is where a boot loader is initialized. Depending on the boot loader, additional files may be stored and read from a partition on the hard drive. After this step the boot loader begins to start the operating system, and is not used again until the next boot. If the computer has only one operating system, the boot loader may not ask for user input. Because of this, many people do not realize they have a boot loader installed.