Before Windows took on the image-based approach with .wim and .esd files (Windows 7 and newer?!), the installation media -- for example for Windows NT 4 -- included files like shell32.dl_ and win32k.sy_.
From Windows itself you would use the built-in tool expand ("LZ Expansion Utility" or
"File Expansion Utility") to decompress these files. Otherwise, obviously, the setup routine itself would do that, with the description inside txtsetup.sif in [SourceDisksFiles].
Is there a way to achieve the same on Linux?