which references (books, web pages, faqs, videos, ...) would you recommend to someone learning about the Linux boot process as thoroughly as possible?

[Albretch Mueller <lbrtchx@gmail.com>]

imagine you had to code a new bootloader now (as an exercise) in
hindsight which books would you have picked?

I am OK with Math and technology of any kind and I am more of a Debian
kind of guy. In fact, I am amazed at how Debian Live would pretty much
boot any piece of sh!t you would feed to it, but, just to mention one
case, knoppix would not. But then knoppix, has such super nice boot-up
options as: toram (right as a parameter as you boot, no tinkering with
any other thing!), fromhd and bootfrom (you can use to put an iso in a
partition of a pen drive, or even stash it in your own work computer,
in order to liberate your DVD player after booting), ..., which DL
doesn’t have.

I know some RS232/USB converters are not reliable. Which ones do you
use? As far as I know laptops don’t come with RS232 anymore. I will
need to log the boot process to study it.

I have been always intrigued about such matters and such differences,
between what I see as supposedly being standardized, like a boot
process.

lbrtchx