• Linux/Documentation/x86/boot.txt

• Wikipedia - vmlinux

  • vm is for virtual memory

  • the Linux kernel in an statically linked executable file format

• vmlinuz

  • compressed vmlinux

• What is the difference between the following kernel Makefile terms: vmlinux, vmlinuz, vmlinux.bin, zimage & bzimage?

• Arch Wiki - Arch boot process

Linux Kernel Booting Process (1) - For NLKB from shimosawa

Linux Kernel Booting Process (2) - For NLKB from shimosawa

bzImage

bzImage = big zImage

Linux <= 2.6.22

• bbootsect (bootsect.o):

• bsetup (setup.o)

• bvmlinux (head.o, misc.o, piggy.o)

piggy.o contains the gzipped vmlinux file in its data section (ELF) (see compressed/Makefile piggy.o). All source files mentioned are in arch/i386/boot/

Linux >= 2.6.23

merged bbootsect and bsetup into one (header.o)

initramfs

• 深入理解 Linux 2.6 的 initramfs 機制 (上) - Jserv

• Wikipedia - initramfs

• Linux/Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt

• Arch Wiki - mkinitcpio

zlib

an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in the gzip file compression program

• Wikipedia - zlib

• Applications

  • Linux Kernel

  • libpng

  • Apache

  • OpenSSH

  • OpenSSL

  • FFmpeg

  • rsync

  • dpkg

  • Subversion

  • Git

  • PostgreSQL

  • …

feature : code is portable, liberally licensed, and has a relatively small memory footprint