Using rootfs of Ubuntu/Debian with arbitrary kernels (on same arch)

Not entirely, no. Good question! Certain directories, like /home, /root, and /etc make good candidates for copy-pasta style of file sharing. But ones that contain CPU-specific statically-linked libraries (and binary-centric folders like bin) aren't going to work how you'd hope. The binaries and linked libraries will have at least three flaws: they link to a resource that doesn't match the memory layouts and assembler instructions it needs to work correctly, the X thing will core dump immediately because the byte positions to start at will be skewed my a byteorder mismatch. And finally, if the CPU should try to actually run any of these, it'll quickly run into a stack operation that isn't valid or even possible in certain cases!

/r/linuxquestions Thread