diff --git a/arch/parisc/Kconfig b/arch/parisc/Kconfig
index ba7b7ddc3844..a57dedbfc7b7 100644
--- a/arch/parisc/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/parisc/Kconfig
@@ -257,6 +257,18 @@ config PARISC_PAGE_SIZE_64KB
 
 endchoice
 
+config PARISC_SELF_EXTRACT
+	bool "Build kernel as self-extracting executable"
+	default y
+	help
+	  Say Y if you want to build the parisc kernel as a kind of
+	  self-extracting executable.
+
+	  If you say N here, the kernel will be compressed with gzip
+	  which can be loaded by the palo bootloader directly too.
+
+	  If you don't know what to do here, say Y.
+
 config SMP
 	bool "Symmetric multi-processing support"
 	---help---
diff --git a/arch/parisc/Makefile b/arch/parisc/Makefile
index 58fae5d2449d..01946ebaff72 100644
--- a/arch/parisc/Makefile
+++ b/arch/parisc/Makefile
@@ -129,8 +129,13 @@ Image: vmlinux
 bzImage: vmlinux
 	$(Q)$(MAKE) $(build)=$(boot) $(boot)/$@
 
+ifdef CONFIG_PARISC_SELF_EXTRACT
 vmlinuz: bzImage
 	$(OBJCOPY) $(boot)/bzImage $@
+else
+vmlinuz: vmlinux
+	@gzip -cf -9 $< > $@
+endif
 
 install:
 	$(CONFIG_SHELL) $(src)/arch/parisc/install.sh \