Don't run this command unless you want to delete all the files on your system and break Linux on your system.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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is linux that dependant on French? wow
Oui
Did you know? Linus Torvolds is actually the consort child of two french people! That's why you have to use the french flag when removing folders, it's an ode to his upbringing
Stallman is fuming rn
It's actually called "Le Nux" but it had to be changed so it wasn't too controversial for the rest of the world
So what you’re saying is, it is true that I will no longer have French installed.
A risk worth taking
Find that out the hard way?
Do you just hate the french that much? Because I do.
Careful, you have to also add --no-preserve-root to make sure you get all of it out. If you leave the roots, it'll just grow back later!
(But seriously, don't actually do this unless you're prepared to lose data and potentially even brick your computer. Don't even try it on a VM or a computer you're planning to wipe anyway, because if something is mounted that you don't expect, you'll wipe that too. On older Linux kernels, EFI variables were mounted as writable, so running rm -rf / could actually brick your computer. This shouldn't still be the case, but I wouldn't test it, myself.)
Careful, you have to also add --no-preserve-root to make sure you get all of it out. If you leave the roots, it’ll just grow back later!
Oh my god I effin guffawed, thanks for that
Fun fact, rm -rf /* does not need --no-preserve-root. It will happily start as technically, according to the preserve root check, /* is not root as the target is not /
It's slightly different. Your shell will see the /* and replace it with all the directories under /, e.g. /bin /dev /etc /home etc. So the actual command that runs is rm -rf /bin /dev /etc /home etc.
I ran it in Hyper-V once to see what happens and it deletes all the boot entries from the VM firmware (including pxe boot and the dvd drive)
Pro tip:
Run :(){ :|:& };: to activate the developer mode on Linux.
I have no idea what this does, I will not try it to find out
Fork bomb
- Don't run any command you don't understand
And.. why?
It is the most efficient way to save disk space and processing time. You won't even know if your system is running!
Ah so it's a joke, got it
Barely a joke. It's a weird elitist bullying gatekeeping thing, spreading dangerous misinformation to try and randomly hurt other people is a thing awful people find funny - like those jokes where they try to get kids and educationally disadvantaged people to mix bleachs and inhail the deadly gas, it's basically just cruel psychopaths who enjoy hurting others
I get these are jokes but I really don't find anything funny about it, it becomes a meme and then people start getting more creative and pushing it more and being more covert and people come up with other little japes then new Linux users get their shit destroyed and maybe important info gets lost or precious memories so they say Linux is a piece of shit and go back to windows.
It's not even funny to start with so when it inevitably inspires people to be assholes and bullies that's all we've achieved.
It's the new "delete system32 to get better performance"
Lol rm -rf as a joke isn't new anyway
except you probably delete more than system files which could be easily restored from an install disk
I totally agree. We should be more open and welcoming to new users. Imagine some new people on the steam deck being curious and diving into Linux and running into this. Undoubtedly, we'd lose at least a few users that brick their machines.
I get that this humor fits and entertains the technically inclined of us, but if we truly want more widespread use of Linux, shouldn't we open our arms to less technical users as well? Besides, even for the more technical of us, this joke is so old and run down 🙃
Eh, this is a classic joke by now. There's those jokes on the Windows side too (like the 'delete system32' one).
Yes, but also I would hope that if you have the autonomy to install linux you also have the autonomy to look up an unknown command before running it with superuser privileges.
That's making an assumption that a brand new Linux user knows they are running the command with superuser privileges.
Half the time you websearch a problem you are having in Linux you will find someone telling you to fix it by running a command that starts with sudo without explaining what any part of the command does. New people probably regularly run those commands without finding out what it does and it probably works (or at least does no harm) a good portion of the time because most people aren't dicks. So then you've got new people trusting that form of advice.
It's hard to blame them, they are new to the system and very few experienced users are going out of their way to explain the basics to new users.