The other group is the one that uses some sort of initrd (loop mount or cpio),There's no need for loop-mounting of any initrd.images. Initramfs (cpio image,
created with tools from their distribution.
Again, they should install that kinit binary as well because kinit emulates
the loop mount handling of /initrd.image. This is for older distributions
that still create a loop mounted initrd.
possible gzipped) works just fine, and it will NOT go away because something
should do the unpacking/loading of that image so that kinit &Co will run.
There's no need for old initrd+pivot_root at all. Only the ones who are,
for some reason, didn't switch to initramfs yet. And I personally see no
reasons not to switch - initramfs (rootfs) concept is much more clean and
easy to handle and gives more possibilities than initrd.
Are you saying that everyone now suddenly is forced to use a cpio image?
Why did hpa add the loop mount code to kinit?
So if you force people who build kernels to use newer tools, one more
external binary will surely not hurt.