what is Vmlinuz file on live ubuntu?

Question

I use Ubuntu 14.04 live on flash. In my computer directory there is a file name vmlinuz

What is this file? I did not have that on my 12.04 on hard derive.

Solution

Vmlinuz file is the name of Linux kernel executable , by other word its a compressed Linux kernel and it is bootable .

Vmlinuz is located in /boot directory , it may be the actual kernel executable or a link to the real one , you can use ls -l /boot to know if its a link or not .

The life map of this file it gets uncompressed, loaded into memory, and executed at boot , then you see your operating system .

By the way its also included in all Ubuntu release , its a basic part of operating system .