vmlinuz newbie questions

[Jason T. Slack-Moehrle]

Hello All,

I am trying to understand vmlinuz. From my searching and reading, one can boot a functioning linux kernel by using vmlinuz. I am still a bit fuzzy on some particulars.

1. Where does one download and learn about vmlinuz? I find URL to FilesTube, etc but I  dont trust these websites.

2. Can one boot vmlinuz in a VMWare Virtual machine?

3. I run OSX on my laptop, could I use something like MacFuse to mount a vmlinuz parition as drive and slip stream files to it? (not wanting to use SSH or FTP really for what I am playing with)

4. Can I compile vmlinuz from source on my OS X machine? 

Some resources and pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
-Jason