Understanding the Linux Kernel: The Linux Kernel Startup

(internals-for-interns.com)

59 points | by valyala 3 hours ago

4 comments

  • jammcq 1 hour ago
    I'm really enjoying this article. Many years ago when I created LTSP I had to dive in and understand how the whole bzImage and initrd worked so we could fetch a kernel with tftp and mount a root filesystem via NFS. It's been years since I've played with this stuff but it's still very interesting to me. Thank you!
  • oncallthrow 41 minutes ago
    I came, I saw the em dash, I closed the tab
  • LPisGood 1 hour ago
    The AI image and immediate emoji bullet point really turn me off from investing in a 36 minute read from a blog started in late 2025.
    • landdate 2 minutes ago
      I must not be that keyed in to AI because I didn't notice. Thankfully I checked the comments before I got too far into the post.
    • gchamonlive 1 hour ago
      > That’s pretty much what the Linux kernel does at boot. The bootloader is the dropship. Your computer is the barren planet. The advance team is the execution of the startup code in the Linux kernel—the one we’ll be following the whole time. And by the end of this article, that advance team will literally have transformed itself into the standby maintenance crew while a brand-new civilian government takes over. Bear with me—it’ll make sense as we go.

      Seems pretty good so far, but the article writes itself in the intro to be very basic, which is a good thing for me, never looked at how the Linux kernel actually boots, so I have only the basic understanding from college.

      • TacticalCoder 1 minute ago
        > Seems pretty good so far, ...

        I'm not sure about "good".

        These horrible analogies though scream AI-generated content. LinkedIn is full of such crap: AI apparently atm loves to sprinking short sentences of the form: "The X is the Y. The A is the B." or "It's not C. It's D". when making analogies.

        Everything has to be a "pattern": things cannot be described on their own. There needs to be a connection to something else for it to explain something: we're talking computers? We must somehow cram in the similitude with a four-strokes combustion engine.

        I mean: how is fine-tuning a program or some heuristics not the same as a variable valve-timing motor engine feature?

        "It's not fixed valve-timing we're dealing with. It's a variocam!".

        If you ask me I find it really tiring already.

    • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
      i see one whole emoji on the entire page
      • LPisGood 1 hour ago
        You’re right, but it’s immediately right up top next to the em dashes.
        • john_strinlai 1 hour ago
          there is a certain irony in not being able to spend 5 seconds to verify your complaint, when your complaint is presumably about the author's lack of effort.
          • LPisGood 35 minutes ago
            I’m not sure what you mean. I saw the emoji bullet point, the em dashes, the date of the first post, and scrolled to a random paragraph; that’s plenty of verification.
    • cube00 1 hour ago
      [dead]