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ELF: the Executable Linkage Format
In ELF, programs are not complete when loaded from disk. Therefore the kernel cannot transfer control to them directly at load time.
Instead the dynamic linker is called to load needed DSO (Dynamic Shared Objects) and perform the needed relocations.
Because of 'Lazy Relocation' which is done only when needed, the dynamic linker will linger on after the program is loaded as well.