KatolaZ wrote:

>The only reason it is needed, as Rainer pointed out, is to host all the drivers
>needed to mount the root fs (or to be more precise, to mount *any*
>unknown root fs, as a kernel shipped with a general-purpose
>distribution has to do).

>If your root fs does not change every five minutes, you can have a
>custom kernel with ext4 and a few other drivers compiled in, and get
>rid of initramfs altogether. Then, the usage that has been done of
>initramfs in the last few years is just an overkill, IMHO.

I had been playing with CRUX for a while, it is a source-based distro
where the installer only puts the core of the system (userland), they compile
their own kernel right after and where the packages are compiled from sources
but with resolving dependencies (no binaries at all), slow but simple,
anyway, they don't have initramfs (initrd) on the install media.
I, having ext4 and SATA drivers compiled as modules, immediately
caught a kernel panic.

People there describe CRUX as LFS with ports, very minimalistic but still
tons of packages avalable. Maybe someone would like to play with it: crux.nu
Handbook is available.

Cheers,
Mitt