cramfs
The compressed ROM file system (or cramfs) is a free (GPL'ed) read-only Linux file system designed for simplicity and space-efficiency. It is mainly used in embedded and small-footprint systems.
Unlike a compressed image of a conventional file system, a cramfs image can be used as it is, i.e. without first decompressing it. For this reason, some Linux distributions use cramfs for initrd images (Debian 3.1 in particular) and installation images (SUSE Linux in particular), where there are constraints on memory and image size.