(This post has been edited since it was first published.)

I wondered why you usually mount / (the root file system) read-write in Linux and decided to do some experiments to find out if it is possible to have it mounted read-only.

So why do you want to do that? Perhaps you have the root file system on a read-only media, such as CD-ROM. Or on a writable media which can only handle a limited number of writes, such as a CD-RW or flash disk. It would also increase security since it will be more difficult (though not impossible) for some malware to infect your system.