My 2 cents...
If you're a newbie in linux i would suggest installing lilo on a floppy disk ( you'll have to boot with the floppy to get in your linux).
Why??
Because if you install lilo on you hd and find out you hate linux then you'll have to do a "fdisk /mbr" to get rid of lilo and will loose all your data on the disk in doing so.
So try it with the floppy first.