• deaf_fish@lemm.ee
    1596·
    1 year ago

    Don’t run this command unless you want to delete all the files on your system and break Linux on your system.

  • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
    14723·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • newline@feddit.nl
      332·
      1 year ago

      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 🙃

      • dot20@lemmy.world
        201·
        1 year ago

        Eh, this is a classic joke by now. There’s those jokes on the Windows side too (like the ‘delete system32’ one).

        • ibk@sh.itjust.works
          131·
          1 year ago

          Except that you cannot actually delete System32 on Windows like you can delete your whole drive on Linux.

          • _thebrain_@lemmy.world
            12·
            1 year ago

            You can’t do this on Linux anymore either. Unless you are on a way out of date system, you need to add the --no-preserce-root flag as well. And I think it still prompts you to make sure it is really want you want to do.

            • grue@lemmy.ml
              11·
              1 year ago

              WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!

              You are about to do something potentially harmful. To continue type in the phrase ‘Yes, do as I say!’

              User: gleefully types in the phrase

          • NoFuckingWaynado@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            In NT4, you could delete ntldr. Next time you reboot, you have a dead system that was a relative PITA to recover. Generally just wipe and reload.

            So many users trying to gain more disk space on those 210 MB hard drives…

            • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              God you just gave me flashbacks of trying to delete files that I was only 60% sure of what they did. Just so I could have room to install some custom rad new mouse cursor icons.

              With only a little bit of malware on the side

    • Phoenix@programming.dev
      227·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
        18·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Gremour@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        I’m around 20 years Linux user and I’m still installing various soft by curl bashing a script from their site.

    • Reliant1087@lemmy.world
      93·
      1 year ago

      It’s a word play that many people find funny. It’s also a call back to something you might have done as a newbie when messing around that people find funny, like talking about that time you thought tried to wash okra after chopping or mixed coloured and white clothes in the laundry. A horrifying experience when it happens but something that you usually find funny later on in retrospect.

      Apart from that sudo in Linux comes with enough warning labels to say that it should only be used when you know what you’re doing. Running unknown commands on terminal is dangerous, like trying to play with the stuff under the hood in a car. Both of these facts are abundantly made clear with big red warning signs in every single reputable source you look up for any popular distro.

    • iegod@lemm.ee
      73·
      1 year ago

      It was funny when I was a sixth grade punk. Now it’s just cringe worthy.

      • ADTJ@feddit.uk
        154·
        1 year ago

        “It was funny when I used to do it but now I don’t like them anymore so everyone else should stop.”

        • Thepolack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          202·
          1 year ago

          It’s okay, nay, good to realise that something you do or did was harmful and change your opinion of said thing. It’s how you grow as a person.

          • ADTJ@feddit.uk
            46·
            1 year ago

            They haven’t actually acknowledged it being harmful, they just said it was cringe worthy. You don’t have to like everything but it’s hypocritical to complain about others’ sense of humour, for something you yourself once enjoyed.

            No evidence of character growth here…

            • computertoucher5000@programming.dev
              61·
              1 year ago

              None of your objections so far have come close to resembling good faith rebuttals. Or even good ones.

              We have eyes, we’ve read the tweet, we (I would hope) know what invoking rm -rf / does. Presumably the context alone there and reading the room here should be enough to clue one in why one would find it specifically cringeworthy (even if I would probably use a tamer way to describe it-personally), and why perhaps one would in the exact same vein just find things funny for different reasons, or just find different things funny altogether. How is it hypocritical to acknowledge the humor in a joke while pointing out that the same joke carries an uncomfortable truth to it? Sometimes those are the best jokes (best of course being subjective)

              Of course, I got the joke straight away and merely chuckled. Not necessarily my brand of humor, but hey, you buy the premise, you’ve bought the bit.

              • ADTJ@feddit.uk
                1·
                1 year ago

                I’m not sure where good (or bad) faith comes into it, they expressed their opinion and I expressed mine. It’s a public forum where we’re allowed to disagree so I’m not really sure what you’re trying to get at, I feel perhaps you’re reading into this a bit too much.

                I did the same as you, I saw it and chuckled a bit at the humour. It wasn’t hilarious, but I found it amusing and I felt like the comment I replied to was a bit harsh, so I put a spin on it.

                I feel from your reply like I’ve annoyed you somehow and I’m sorry if that’s the case, it wasn’t my intention.

            • iegod@lemm.ee
              3·
              1 year ago

              I made a comment about my preferences and now I’m a hypocrite because I don’t share yours? Let’s temper the conversation here, we’re not analyzing individual levels of human goodness based on individual comments.

              Please continue to find whatever thing is funny to you as funny. I will continue to opine where I decide on my tastes. Glad we have this understanding.

              • ADTJ@feddit.uk
                1·
                1 year ago

                It’s not because you don’t share my tastes, I thought it was hypocritical to call it cringe when you mentioned you also used to enjoy this humour. That’s as far as it goes.

                I agree with what you’re saying about taste. Just let people enjoy what they wanna enjoy as long as it isn’t hurting anyone.

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
      31·
      1 year ago

      This is a meme page… I would get this comment if it was in a linux community

      • ObliviousEnlightenment@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        They don’t need learning experiences with Windows. Lot of folks dont want to learn, they wanna do things like browse the web, game, work on their jobs, ect. They need a system that just works

  • nefarious@kbin.social
    1014·
    1 year ago

    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.)

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
      44·
      1 year ago

      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 /

      • koper@feddit.nl
        15·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works
      24·
      1 year ago

      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

    • Infernal_pizza@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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)

  • kaschu@programming.devEnglish
    771·
    1 year ago

    I have checked this and can confirm that after entering this command, there is no more French in the system. 👍

  • vsis@feddit.clEnglish
    36·
    1 year ago

    Pro tip: Run :(){ :|:& };: to activate the developer mode on Linux.

  • tungah@lemmy.world
    426·
    1 year ago

    Is sudo even necessary? I bet the command would execute without any resistance.

    • Salamander@mander.xyz
      2·
      1 year ago

      I wiped all my data from a supercomputer by trying to ‘cd’ into a folder but making a typo and then running rm -rvf * from my home directory.

      At least they kept backups… The system administrators were probably amused about who gets access

    • Jtskywalker@lemm.ee
      9·
      1 year ago

      I got a friend with that in Destiny 2 just a couple years ago. I guess when you’ve been playing for hours and you ask how to take a screenshot, you don’t put 2 and 2 together quick enough

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.world
    204·
    1 year ago

    For security, disabling the root account is important, so be sure to add --no-preserve-root on the end!

  • AKADAP@lemmy.ml
    183·
    1 year ago

    The evil thing about this is that it will be at minimum hours, possibly days, before someone who did this can come back to complain.

  • blastofffox@lemmy.world
    151·
    1 year ago

    Let’s be involved in more such discussions so if OpenAI starts scrapping lemmy then future versions of ChatGPTs can fuck people over.