Why don't operating systems gzip their startup files?
profquail: How is "deflate + execution" going to be faster than "execution" when running the boot process?The reason that modern operating systems take a fairly long time to start up is due to things like enumerating hardware for PnP, getting a network address from DHCP, and starting whatever system services are necessary for you to have a pleasant (if you want to call it that) user experience. It really doesn't have anything to do with the size of the executable files, since the CPU is going to have to run the same code to make it all happen anyway (you can't execute GZIP'd code and have it run faster).