17.20.1. vmlinux vs bzImage vs zImage vs Image
Between all archs on QEMU and gem5 we touch all of those kernel built output files.
We are trying to maintain a description of each at: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5518/what-is-the-difference-between-the-following-kernel-makefile-terms-vmlinux-vml/482978#482978
QEMU does not seem able to boot ELF files like vmlinux: https://superuser.com/questions/1376944/can-qemu-boot-linux-from-vmlinux-instead-of-bzimage
Converting arch/* images to vmlinux is possible in theory x86 with extract-vmlinux but we didn’t get any gem5 boots working from images generated like that for some reason, see: https://github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat/issues/79