What's the purpose of initrd.img{,.old} and vmlinuz{,.old} symlinks in the root dir?

[Mikhail Morfikov]

I have an encrypted (LUKSv2) LVM setup with a separate unencrypted /boot/
partition. When I install a new kenrel in the system, the following symlinks are
created in the root directory (/):

        # ls -al /
        ...
        lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root           29 2020-02-14 17:22:18 initrd.img 
-> boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-4-amd64
        lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root           27 2020-02-24 00:37:53 
initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-5.5.4-amd64
        ...
        lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root           26 2020-02-14 17:22:18 vmlinuz -> 
boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-4-amd64
        lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root           24 2020-02-24 00:37:53 vmlinuz.old 
-> boot/vmlinuz-5.5.4-amd64

So I have a question here: what's the purpose of the links?

Also, I'm trying to configure refind EFI boot manager, and basically I don't
want to change its config file with each kernel update (the numbers in the file
names change).

Wouldn't be better to create the links under /boot/ dir instead (or in addition
to the already existing ones, if they serve any purpose)? 

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