You might have trouble compiling new kernels with very old versions of GCC.

Besides that, no, GCC versions are not tied to the Linux kernel's version:

• You can run an ancient GCC version on a system with a new kernel.


• You can run a new GCC version on a system with a very old kernel. The only thing that would stop you from doing this would be if your new GCC version requires a version of libc that will not run on that kernel. But this is not a particularly likely scenario.

With that said, you should be careful about installing an older GCC over a newer GCC, since the newer GCC may be needed. If you're building GCC yourself from source, you can configure the build to install in its own prefix (rather than /usr). If this still breaks builds, make sure the newer GCC (which was there before) is in a directory earlier in the PATH environment variable than the older GCC (which you more recently installed).