Google and Collabora Add Major Change to Linux Kernel 5.1 for Chrome OS Devices

According to Collabora’s latest report on their contributions to the Linux 5.1 kernel, which arrived last week, it is now possible to mount and boot a mapped device by adding a kernel parameter via command-line at boot time, thus bypassing initramfs image. For Linux kernel 5.1, twelve Collabora’s developers also contributed 64 commits and 111 sign-offs, along with lots of bug reports and testing. All previous kernel versions required the presence of an initramfs image to boot the system to a file system locate in a device-mapper device, but there were many cases where users couldn’t use an initramfs image, so this new feature comes in handy when you want to boot to a device-mapper device without the need of an initramfs image, just by using a simple kernel boot parameter.