On Thu, 8 Jun 2023, James Addison wrote:
Hi folks, Does anyone have experience running Debian systems without using an initramfs? I'd be particularly keen to hear about laptop/desktop/server systems, because I think that a large motivating factor to use initramfs -- across many distributions -- was to provide a mechanism outside-the-compiled-kernel to load additional device driver modules, and I'd like to check that that motivation is still valid. Thanks, James
I don't know for certain but I think running without initramfs is 'unsupported'. Some of the discussion around merged-usr has been predicated on /usr always being mounted. If you want to do this then at the very least I think /usr will have to be on the root filesystem and I don't know if it will be possible at all without a custom kernel. IIUC trixy will enforce merged-usr, it's optional until then. (bicbw, it might be bookworm that will enforce it - all my systems are already merged and I don't run testing)