Initrd and/or initramfs is used to load temporary root file system into RAM or system memory hence its named like initial RAM Disk/FS.

What is initramfs in Linux?

initramfs is the solution introduced for the 2.6 Linux kernel series. … This means that firmware files are available before in-kernel drivers load. The userspace init is called instead of prepare_namespace. All finding of the root device, and md setup happens in userspace.

What is the difference between initrd and initramfs in Linux?

Both initrd and ramfs are zipped at compile time, but the difference is, initrd is a block device unpacked to be mounted by the kernel at booting, while ramfs is unpacked via cpio into memory.