I fell for a similar (but less) obvious joke on my first Linux installation back in 1995. That one used dd instead of rm. I lost a lot of code that I had written. After that, I’ve failed to see the humor in this kind of joke. There’s always the risk that someone new doesn’t understand it’s a joke, and tries it out.
I agree. The / directory may receive special considerations, and it may be extra protected, but once I was doing something with rm -r and …/* in some folder inside my home directory… it wasn’t fun.
I fell for a similar (but less) obvious joke on my first Linux installation back in 1995. That one used dd instead of rm. I lost a lot of code that I had written. After that, I’ve failed to see the humor in this kind of joke. There’s always the risk that someone new doesn’t understand it’s a joke, and tries it out.
It happened in this very post, actually. Serves them right for French bashing.
The rest of the time, I’d agree with you, I’ve never done this joke nor condone it.
I prefer the less harmful “alt+F4” joke, though most people know what that one does by now.
I agree. The / directory may receive special considerations, and it may be extra protected, but once I was doing something with rm -r and …/* in some folder inside my home directory… it wasn’t fun.