@Pietro -- at a very gross level the kernel generates events to userspace when new hardware is detected, this triggers udev which triggers modprobe which loads the appropriate hardware.
It should not affect initramfs as that would have been rebuilt when the kernel was installed.
Could you confirm the version of the kernel you were testing with by pasting the contents of /proc/version_signature here.
@Pietro -- at a very gross level the kernel generates events to userspace when new hardware is detected, this triggers udev which triggers modprobe which loads the appropriate hardware.
It should not affect initramfs as that would have been rebuilt when the kernel was installed.
Could you confirm the version of the kernel you were testing with by pasting the contents of /proc/version_ signature here.