vmlinux and bzImage

[Tim ODriscoll]

On Sun, 17 Nov 2002, William Gerik wrote:
> Why vmlinux and why not bzImage? What are the differences? What is vmlinux 
> exactly? etc.
> 
I believe vmlinux is the standard kernel, and bzImage is a compressed 
version.

x86 machines have a limitation on how much RAM can be accessed at first
bootup (640K I think), hence the need to compress the kernel if it's
larger than that. PPCs don't have this limitation and therefore don't need
the kernel to be compressed.

HTH,

Tim