In Linux, there are 6 distinct stages in the typical booting process

1. BIOS
2. MBR
3. GRUB
4. Kernel
5. Init
6. Runlevel
1. BIOS(Basic I/O System)
• Basic I/O System.
• First program that executed which is stored in read-only memory on
motherboard of computer.
• Perform POST (Power-on self-test) verify the hardware components
and peripheral to ensure if computers in working condition.
• Check for bootable device like pen drive, hard disk etc.
• Handover controle to first sector of device i.e. MBR
2. MBR(Master Boot Record)
• 512 bytes, first sector of any bootable device contains machine code
instruction to boot a machine and having following info
 Boot loader(446 bytes)
 Partition tables(64 bytes)
 Error caching (2 bytes)
• It will load boot loader into the memory and handover to it.
3. GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader)
• Load /boot/grub/grub.cfg at boot time
• At this stage, User will be able to see GUI asking different OS or kernels
configured to boot.
• Once you selected the kernel, it locates the corresponding kernel binary
/boot/vmlinuz-<kernal-version>
• Main job is to load kernel and initrd/initramfs image into memory
• Once load kernel in RAM, it passes control to it
• In RHEL7 Default boot loader is GRUB2
• In Ubuntu22 Default boot loader is GRUB
• GRUB IS FOR x86 architecture, it could be different for others architecture like
Intel
KERNEL
• First Kernal is loaded into read-only mode.
• Initramfs/initrd gets decompressed and then it first loads temperory
file system.
• Initrd then detects and load the drivers from temperory file system to
load actual file system.
• Mount other partition like LVM,RAID etc unmount itself.
• Once main filesystem is mounted, kernel initialize the first process
init/SystemD
You can find this images under /boot folder.
6. SYSTEMD/Init
• It manages services and system initialization using unit files
• First services loaded with process ID 1
• Start all required processes
• /etc/systemd/system/default.target
• To bring the system to the run-level/targets
6. Runlevel
1.User Space: Once the init or systemd process is running, it launches
user-space programs and services, including system daemons and the
graphical user interface (if applicable).
2.Login: On systems with a graphical user interface, you'll see a login
screen. After successful login, the desktop environment is loaded. On
server systems, you might access the system through a terminal.
3.User Interaction: Finally, you can interact with the Linux system
through the GUI or command line, running applications and
performing tasks.