Removing bash using rm would probably be a bad idea. Although I think using the filesystem for this purpose is a good idea -- you get parallel-installed versio

Removing bash using rm would probably be a bad idea. Although I think using the filesystem for this purpose is a good idea -- you get parallel-installed versions for free, and it's more reliable and transparent than what you get from rpm -- you're right that just deleting stuff willy nilly won't work. You still need to manage dependencies, and dependency graphs are not easy for humans to keep in our heads.