Quoting Alessandro Selli (alessandroselli@???):

> > 'It cannot work if what you need to do is feeding the HD controller some
> > proprietary firmware that cannot legally be embedded in the GPL driver.'
> >
> > Has nothing whatsover to do with distribution. Obviously.
>
> It obviously does, because that is one of the reasons distributions have to
> equip their kernels with initramfs: they are needed on machines that would otherwise
> fail to boot due to the fact they will be unable to mount / on boot.

The post in question had nothing to do with any of that.