this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
7 points (88.9% liked)

Pop!_OS (Linux)

5127 readers
1 users here now

Pop!_OS is an operating system developed by System76 for STEM and creative professionals who use their computer as a tool to discover and create. Unleash your potential on secure, reliable open source software. Based on your exceptional curiosity, we sense you have a lot of it.

Unleash your potential

Whether this is your first experience with Linux, or your latest adventure, all are welcome to discuss and ask questions about Pop!_OS and COSMIC. Keep the discussions friendly though, and remember to assume good intentions whenever you reply. We're all here because we have a shared love for Linux and open source software.

System76 Logo

Support us by buying System76 hardware for you or your company! Or by donating on the Pop!_OS website through the "Support Pop" button. Pop!_OS and COSMIC are fully funded by System76 hardware sales. All systems are assembled in the USA. With your support, we'll work to push the Linux desktop forward with COSMIC.

Links

Guides

Hardware

Recommended

Community Rules

Follow the Code of Conduct

All posts on pop_os must adhere to the Pop!_OS community Code of Conduct. https://github.com/pop-os/code-of-conduct

Be helpful

Posts to pop_os must be helpful. When responding to a user asking for help, do not provide tongue-in-cheek responses like "RTM" or links to LMGTFY. Linking to direct sources that answer the asker's question is fine, but it's advised to provide some explanation as to how you got to that source.

Critique should be constructive

We within the Pop!_OS community welcome helpful criticism or ideas on ways to improve. However, basic "It's bad" or other simple negative comments don't help anyone fix anything. When voicing a complaint about something, try to point out ways the complaint could be improved or worked around, so that we can make a better product for it.

This rule applies to both Pop!_OS and its projects as well as other products available from third-parties.

Don't post malicious "advice"

It can be funny to joke about malicious commands, however this is not the venue for it. Do not advise users to run commands which will lock up their systems, steal their data, or erase their drive. Examples of this include (but are not limited to) fork bombs, rm, etc.

Posts violating this rule will be removed, even if the post is clearly in jest. Repeated offences may lead to a ban. You may understand that the command isn't serious, but a new user might not.

No personal attacks

Posts making a personal attack on any user will not be tolerated.

No hate speech

Hate speech of any kind will not be tolerated. Any violations will be removed, and are grounds for a ban.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm exploring ways to shave a few seconds off of my boot time, and I came across a post that stated, "my initrd is pretty small--doesn’t really load much--and Arch also defaults to using zstd which is also faster to decompress versus gzip."

What compression does Pop! use for initrd and the kernel? When I run ls -al /boot, I see files such as 14M vmlinuz-6.4.6-76060406-generic and 119M initrd.img-6.4.6-76060406-generic. Are these compressed?

Lastly, is there a way to choose the compression of these boot files without a custom kernel build? Or is what I'm trying to do "off the beaten path" and going to lead to "you have to compile your own kernel from here on out"?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, thanks! Slightly different location, but basically the same. Here we go:

$ grep CONFIG_KERNEL_ /boot/config-6.4.6-76060406-generic
# CONFIG_KERNEL_GZIP is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_BZIP2 is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_LZMA is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_XZ is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_LZO is not set
# CONFIG_KERNEL_LZ4 is not set
CONFIG_KERNEL_ZSTD=y

So the kernel is "zstd" compressed.

OTOH, I'm not sure if this means anything about initrd (ASCII cpio archive??)

$ file /boot/initrd.img-6.4.6-76060406-generic 
/boot/initrd.img-6.4.6-76060406-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
[–] Spider89 1 points 1 year ago

Looks like your initrd isn't compressed. Huh?