1y ago

Linux Best Practices

196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Rule for Beginners

644 61

126 comments

Don't run this command unless you want to delete all the files on your system and break Linux on your system.
- 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
  
  It's actually called "Le Nux" but it had to be changed so it wasn't too controversial for the rest of the world
  
  Lmfao 🤣🤣
  
  Oui
  
  Dependency hell
- So what you’re saying is, it is true that I will no longer have French installed.
  
  A risk worth taking
- What a kind soul
- Find that out the hard way?
  Do you just hate the french that much? Because I do.

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.
  
  I'm around 20 years Linux user and I'm still installing various soft by curl bashing a script from their site.
- 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.
- I mean, I'm pretty tech savvy, but I fell for a troll when setting up a CUDA cluster once. Typed some command I thought would remove an old driver, wiped the system and I started from scratch.
  I learned to understand every command before blindly typing it in.
  
  Die you remember what was the trolls command was?
- It was funny when I was a sixth grade punk. Now it's just cringe worthy.
  
  "It was funny when I used to do it but now I don't like them anymore so everyone else should stop."
- It'll be a good learning experience for anyone who runs commands seen on this community.
  
  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
- This is a meme page... I would get this comment if it was in a linux community
- they'll learn to not run any command they see from the internet, the hard way 😔

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.)
- 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.
- 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
- 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)

I have checked this and can confirm that after entering this command, there is no more French in the system. 👍
- (Nor anything else...)
- Awesome thanks, I just also run it now waiting for it to fin

Don't run any command you don't understand
- That's why you run this one though because you don't understand French. After you run this you'll understand every command afterwards.
  
  You'll certainly understand french after running it
- blindly copy and pastes top stack overflow answer
  
  Yeah, seriously don't do that!
- What about downloading a shell script and piping it directly into a shell?
- Well, I understand it removes the french language, right? /s

Is sudo even necessary? I bet the command would execute without any resistance.
- Boooo 🏳️
- Bush wants its Irak War II joke back.

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
  
  Define a function called : which runs itself and creates another fork of itself as a background job :&. After the function definition call the function (final :).
  It's easier to understand once you realize that : is a valid identifier. It is a simple mildly obfuscated fork bomb.

But I'm French?
- I'd still run the command anyway if I were you. Clearly you speak English, so you can afford to remove some bloat /s
- You can then remove the russian federation lang pack: rm -rf /
- bon... désolé

rm -rf * stands for read mail really fast, and the * addresses all mails.
- Remember to cd / before you use the command to address all of the emails
- 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

Damit, lolled at a restaurant like a maniac.

Remember the old days in AOL Chat when we'd randomly tell people to hit Alt-F4?
- 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
- Press f10 in source games. Classic.

I am saving this thread. I am new to Linux and you guys have all sorts of helpful tips!

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

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.
- Respond on the phone?

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

fr, fr, no preserve root
- ong ong no cap

rm -fr -nocap -slay

We need more tips like this to fool the next ChatGPT.
- As if that shit needs to have any more misinformation

Dont tell that to Germans
- Reminds me of this...
- Well- French is and was extensively thought in German Schools. Even during both world wars
  
  I think french language was what triggered the need of unification of German language. French was very popular at some time and there was a real concern about that.
- Is there an invade-command?

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
- Duck fr*nch
  Edit: ducking autocorrect
  
  Quack
  
  What?

As an Italian I will fall for that ... We hate France

I wonder if you could still restore a zfs snapshot after this, or if you'd need to boot into recovery

Quite lame joke. Not even that destructive. Just reboot, roll back snaphot and show your middle finger to everyone.
Wanna be more secure? Use RO root fs.

Not related to programming
- The channel is Programmer Humor, not Programming Humor
  
  Still, why not post it in Linux Memes instead, so it's more on topic?
- 🤓
- Shell script isn't programming I guess

126 comments