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.
