The Linux Boot Process of 2004

by Scott Schneider

A decade ago, I was a new graduate student at William and Mary taking a course called “Linux Kernel Internals.” For this course, we all presented a walk-through of a particular part of the kernel. I had the boot process, and I created the slides Booting: From Power Up to Login Prompt.

The slides can be read on their own. This kind of a code walk-through reinforces a mantra I repeat when it comes to understanding computer systems: It’s all just code. We can always understand a computer system by systematically reading the code.