no initrd - update

[Piscium]

After my previous email, I modified 10_linux per the following email:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2010-06/msg00106.html

Then I rebooted, and there were two noticeable differences:
1. Graphical Fedora boot took effect - I had previously the option rhgb
(Red Hat graphical boot) passed as parameter to the kernel but 
seemingly it only took effect after the initrd command was added. Interesting.

2. SELinux got started. As it was the first time ever on this PC, it took 
several minutes to label the files. I knew that SELinux was not running 
but I always assumed that it was because of an option that had to be 
passed to the kernel. It turns out that without initrd SELinux does not start.
Also interesting.

In a nutshell, it appears that while initrd is not needed (I have been using
Fedora since last December without it), it does have an effect.

I would be interested to know more opinions about this, and also why 
old kernels (like 2.16.18 used in RHEL 5.5 and its derivatives) do appear 
to need initrd.