only partially true. as i understand it (and i asked about this way
back in
history once upon a time), you only need an initrd if you want to mount the
*root* filesystem by label.
if you use an initrd, then the mounting of the root filesystem will (somehow)
be able to use labels -- perhaps the initrd forces the mounting to happen in
user space?
from man mkinitrd.. This leaves me to believe that yes, you /only/ need to use
initrd if your root partition is utilizing labels.. as is default in
redhat/fedora.
If a label is used, as in root=LABEL=rootPart the initrd will search all
available devices for an ext2 or ext3 filesystem with the appropriate label,
and mount that device as the root filesystem.