By convention, Linux kernels are called vmlinuz (usually with aversion suffix and found in /boot , although Debian is in love with a /vmlinuz symlink). This name has an interesting history thatprobably stretches back to the early days of Unix.

(I say probably because I'm just guessing at some of the Linux history,as it predates my involvement with Linux.)

Originally, Unix kernels were just called /unix ; this is the name BellLabs used for the original versions up through V7

The really interesting bit of Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons for me can be summedup in the lead-in:

There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch modeover 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is toget the work done.

The article elaborates this, and makes for interestingreading. In the same area is Hours of Work in U.S. History , if one wantsanother set of data.

(Unfortunately I

One of the things that some people like to trot out in defense of Unixis the old chestnut:

On Unix everything runs as a user process, so you never have bluescreen of death reboots like you do with Windows; even if somethinggoes wrong, it's just a user process and your system doesn't go down.

I like Unix, but this sort of defense of it has always irritatedthe heck out of me. Ignoring how it can be false in practice , it's completely disingenuous

I happened to notice this today: if you go look at your garden varietythree prong power plugs, you'll see that the ground connector issomewhat longer than the two power connectors. Thus when you insert theplug the ground wire is connected before the power goes hot, even ifthings are a bit off-balance.

There's applications of this safe- before -engagement features in systemadministration; for example, Unix boot sequences usually configure IPfiltering before the network interfaces come up, not after.