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Why the kernel is named vmlinuz? I have always been curious about this...
- 08-01-2006 #1Linux Guru
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Why the name (vmlinuz?)
Why the kernel is named vmlinuz? I have always been curious about this
Put your hand in an oven for a minute and it will be like an hour, sit beside a beautiful woman for an hour and it will be like a minute, that is relativity. --Albert Einstein
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Don't PM me with questions, instead post in the forums
- 08-01-2006 #2Trusted Penguin
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Well, Wikipedia has the history at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vmlinux
To sum it up: basically, UNIX used to call the kernel binary "unix". Once virtual memory entered the game, kernels supporting virtual memory were called "vmunix".
Anyway, when Linux came around, they logically changed this to "vmlinux". The final step was the genesis of use of zlib compression to make the binary smaller (early i386 systems had a size restriction that sometimes was smaller than the kernel), and the name became "vmlinuz" to show the compression.DISTRO=Arch
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- 08-01-2006 #3Linux Guru
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Learn something new everyday.
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when you respond to "get a life!" with "what's the URL?"
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- 08-02-2006 #4Just Joined!
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Learning something new everyday
Yes I agree. never thought in looking it up. but now I know.
which brings up a question..
Who wants to go through the wiki and compile a linux lingo definitions manual for the forums?
I think that would be cool.
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