Understanding the basics of the boot process on the x86

In the following list, we provide a brief overview of the typical boot process on an x86[_64] desktop (or laptop), workstation, or server:

1. Early boot, POST, BIOS initialization – the BIOS (short for Basic Input Output System; essentially, the firmware on the x86) loads up the first sector of the first bootable disk into RAM and jumps to its entry point. This forms what is often referred to as the stage one bootloader, whose main job is to load the stage two (larger) bootloader code into memory and jump to it.
2. Now the stage two bootloader code takes control. Its main job is to load the actual (stage three) GRUB bootloader into memory and jump to its entry point (GRUB is typically the bootloader employed on x86[-64] systems)
3. The (GRUB) bootloader will be passed both the compressed kernel image file (/boot/vmlinuz-<kernel-ver>) as well as the compressed initramfs image file (/boot/initrd.img-<kernel-ver...