> ...But to load it at boot time it absolutely must be done through an initramfs. Is that right? No, not AFAICS; it is incorrect. On UEFI the system boots fro

> ...But to load it at boot time it absolutely must be done through an initramfs. Is that right? No, not AFAICS; it is incorrect. On UEFI the system boots from a FAT32 partition. Put the kernel directly on that FAT32 partition, and any necessary modules such as ZFS, and the kernel can load the ZFS module from FAT32 and then mount root directly without any need for an initramfs. This is how systemd-boot works. I am not advocating systemd-boot -- I found it a pain to work with -- but the point is that it's perfectly possible and doable. The initramfs is a bodge and it's time we did away with it. It should only be needed for installation and rescue media.