I recently deleted my active Linux kernel and continued using the system as if nothing drastic happened. Are there any side-effects to deleting the Linux kernel that's currently in use? What about other non-Windows kernels?
What potential ills can be brought by 'deleting' a live kernel?
kernel
The Linux kernel is completely loaded into RAM on boot. After the system is booted, it never goes back and tries to read anything from that file. The same goes for drivers, once loaded into the kernel.If you deleted the only kernel image on disk, the only consequence is that the system cannot be successfully rebooted unless you install a replacement kernel image before reboot.As for other OSes, I imagine it is the same, simply due to the nature of OS kernels. They're intentionally small bits of code that stay running all the time, so there is no incentive to keep going back to disk to look at the code again. It's always in memory. (RAM or VM.)