INITRD: what is its use?

[twstd3bc]

I've been booting Linux since 2000, but other than using the initrd that boots on an install CD, I've never used this feature myself. My Grub kernel line is usually something simple like "kernel /bzImage-2.6.18.6 root=/dev/hda3". But then, I just recently updated to an AMD64 system with a SATA drive (before I used IDE drive on Athlon XP). I can barely get kernels booted with the new configs in kernel 2.6.20+, and it seems to only work with an initrd created with genkernel. My question is, is it still possible to boot without the initrd (once I get things sorted out), or will I have to use it from now on?

[nixnut]

Moved from Kernel & Hardware to Duplicate Threads.

See https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-193273.html
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