Is initrd useful/necessary with a custom kernel?

["John Purser" <jmpurser2@home.com>]

I'm running Woody with a 2.4.10 kernel.  When I first upgraded from 2.2.19
to 2.4.9 I had to add a line to lilo.conf telling where the initrd was in
order to boot.  After reading man initrd and initrd.txt from the kernel
documentation it seemed that the initrd was only useful/necessary for
creating a generic kernel.  In my current kernel ram disk is not enabled.  I
commented out the initrd line in lilo.conf and ran lilo and the system now
boots just fine.

My question is am I missing anything by cutting out the initrd phase of
boot?

Thanks,

John Purser