diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index 412ba93673fa..7c0180c41a3c 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -153,26 +153,27 @@ choice
 	  version of this functionality (bzip2 only), for 2.4, was
 	  supplied by Christian Ludwig)
 
-	  High compression options are mostly useful for users, who
-	  are low on disk space (embedded systems), but for whom ram
-	  size matters less.
+	  High compression options tend to be more useful in most cases,
+	  as bootloaders are often egregiously slow to read the kernel
+	  from the disk/SD card/network/etc, overcoming any boot time
+	  savings you would get from faster decompression.
 
-	  If in doubt, select 'gzip'
+	  If in doubt, select 'xz'
 
 config KERNEL_GZIP
 	bool "Gzip"
 	depends on HAVE_KERNEL_GZIP
 	help
-	  The old and tried gzip compression. It provides a good balance
-	  between compression ratio and decompression speed.
+	  The old and tried gzip compression. You generally want it if
+	  some tool you use doesn't support more modern compressors.
 
 config KERNEL_LZMA
 	bool "LZMA"
 	depends on HAVE_KERNEL_LZMA
 	help
-	  This compression algorithm's ratio is best.  Decompression speed
-	  is between gzip and bzip2.  Compression is slowest.
-	  The kernel size is about 33% smaller with LZMA in comparison to gzip.
+	  An old version of xz, like it providing strong compression at slow
+	  speed. It lacks a header and support for filters or uncompressed
+	  blocks, thus it's usually better to pick xz.
 
 config KERNEL_XZ
 	bool "XZ"
@@ -193,9 +194,9 @@ config KERNEL_LZO
 	bool "LZO"
 	depends on HAVE_KERNEL_LZO
 	help
-	  Its compression ratio is the poorest among the choices. The kernel
-	  size is about 10% bigger than gzip; however its speed
-	  (both compression and decompression) is the fastest.
+	  Its compression ratio is pretty poor (but still better than
+	  LZ4). You want to pick ZSTD (similar speed but much better
+	  compression) or LZ4 (much better speed) instead.
 
 config KERNEL_LZ4
 	bool "LZ4"
diff --git a/usr/Kconfig b/usr/Kconfig
index 8d99edacabc9..f6e871585f05 100644
--- a/usr/Kconfig
+++ b/usr/Kconfig
@@ -131,17 +131,15 @@ config INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_NONE
 	  on those architectures that support this. However, not compressing the
 	  initramfs may lead to slightly higher memory consumption during a
 	  short time at boot, while both the cpio image and the unpacked
-	  filesystem image will be present in memory simultaneously
+	  filesystem image will be present in memory simultaneously.
 
 config INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_GZIP
 	bool "Gzip"
 	depends on RD_GZIP
 	help
-	  Use the old and well tested gzip compression algorithm. Gzip provides
-	  a good balance between compression ratio and decompression speed and
-	  has a reasonable compression speed. It is also more likely to be
-	  supported by your build system as the gzip tool is present by default
-	  on most distros.
+	  Use the old and well tested gzip compression algorithm. Gzip doesn't
+	  provide very good compression nor speed, but it's the safest choice,
+	  with wide support.
 
 config INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_XZ
 	bool "XZ"
@@ -150,20 +148,20 @@ config INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_XZ
 	  XZ uses the LZMA2 algorithm and has a large dictionary which may cause
 	  problems on memory constrained systems. The initramfs size is about
 	  30% smaller with XZ in comparison to gzip. Decompression speed is
-	  better than that of bzip2 but worse than gzip and LZO. Compression is
-	  slow.
+	  okayish but still slowest of all currently available algorithms.
+	  Compression is slow.
 
-	  If you choose this, keep in mind that you may need to install the xz
-	  tool to be able to compress the initram.
+	  Any modern distro provides xz in its default install, but on
+	  minimal build systems you might need to install xz-utils to be
+	  able to compress the initram.
 
 config INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_LZO
 	bool "LZO"
 	depends on RD_LZO
 	help
 	  It's compression ratio is the second poorest amongst the choices. The
-	  kernel size is about 10% bigger than gzip. Despite that, it's
-	  decompression speed is the second fastest and it's compression speed
-	  is quite fast too.
+	  kernel size is about 10% bigger than gzip. Pick ZSTD instead, or LZ4
+	  if speed is paramount.
 
 	  If you choose this, keep in mind that you may need to install the lzop
 	  tool to be able to compress the initram.
