No, this is a very old joke that uses the fact the command has "fr" in it to trick people about what the command does. Joking aside, here's what the command actually does:
rm is the command to delete files and folders
-f is the force modifier. This means it'll keep going even if it encounters problems and just delete as much as it can
-r is the recursive modifier. That means it'll go down every folder it sees in the target and delete the contents as well, and delete the contents of folders of folders, etc.
/ is the target. This is the root of the filesystem. If you're used to Windows, that's like targeting C:.
Put it all together, and this command basically deletes your whole filesystem. A safeguard was put in place a while back due to people meming about this and causing newbies to delete their whole system. Now it won't work unless you put in --no-preserve-root, which tells rm that yes, you really mean it, please delete my whole system.
/* as the target works around that safeguard, because technically deleting everything in root is not the same as deleting root itself.
I thought this was stupid, how much space could a language pack take? Then I tried it and my system is at least %15 faster, turns out there is a bug in the dialogue disseminator preventing matriarchal ascension in the domestic power structure.
Although I'm French, I still laugh at the stupid memes by the English speaking internet that make fun of my people.
Then again, there is a sense of justice in imagining people falling for this. 😁
This is very much the Linux version of the old tricking gamers to alt+F4 gag.
My favorite was when I was teaching a friend Squad, and we were in a vehicle. I explained you hit the F keys to change seat (which is true), so F1, F2, F3, etc. Noticing that seats 1, 2 and 3 were filled, I then told him he can hold down alt to swap seats faster. He then immediately quits the game xD
How do you think this is making fun of your people? It's making fun of non-French people that would want to "remove the French language pack" because they're not French
My filesystem is btrfs and I've got timeshift setup, how hard will this fuck me, if at all? Is there anyway I can be fucked harder? (Asking for a friend)
On a Btrfs filesystem, running rm -rf /* will attempt to delete everything in the root directory, which includes all files and directories accessible to your permissions. However, Btrfs snapshots are designed to be resistant to regular file deletion commands. Here’s what happens:
1. Snapshots remain intact: rm -rf /* doesn’t automatically delete snapshots because snapshots are stored in special subvolumes. By default, this command won’t affect subvolumes that are not mounted within the filesystem you’re deleting from.
2. You would need specific commands to delete snapshots: To delete snapshots on Btrfs, you would typically use a command like btrfs subvolume delete <snapshot> for each snapshot individually, as snapshots are managed by the filesystem and not treated as standard directories.
3. The data inside the snapshots is preserved: Even if files in the root filesystem are deleted, any data captured in snapshots remains, as snapshots are essentially read-only copies at a certain point in time.
Important Note: If the snapshots are mounted and accessible in the directory tree where rm -rf /* is run, you could accidentally delete them if the command traverses into the snapshots’ directories. To protect snapshots, administrators often mount them in isolated directories (e.g., /snapshots) or keep them unmounted until explicitly needed.
In summary, unless you run specific deletion commands for Btrfs subvolumes, snapshots should remain unaffected by rm -rf /* due to the unique way Btrfs manages snapshots.
Don't ever do this on a current bare metal system!
Even if you have everything backed up, plan on re-installing anyway, and just want to see what happens.
On a modern EFI system, recursively deleting everything (including the EFI path) has a chance of permanently hard-bricking your computer! https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
That's not comparable. The situations are quite different. Let me explain:
In your example: Windows. It's basically the "default" operating system. Billions of users. Some of those billions are kinda dumb and will type in a command or delete a folder because the Internet said so. Ok, so you ruined the day of some dummy with a practical joke. Not particularly funny, but whatever, it's just some dummy.
In the Linux example, here's how it goes. There's an alternative OS people can try out. People who are fed up with Microsoft. They install Linux for the first time, and what's their first experience? Some practical joke ruins their day. These are the people we want! The good ones. The ones brave enough to try out Linux, and their first experience is a dumb meme that ruins their day, or week, and totally turns them off from the Linux community.
This is not the same as pranking some dumb Windows users.
Along with 3 other paragraphs of reading, writing, and security, or just other complicated stuff they don't need when they really just need to click properties then allow executable.
remove the "." to adress the root of the problem.
Omitting the dot removes Canadian French too
Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. \s
the greater good
Yarp
Pro tip: Omit the dot
.before the/to make sure you cleansed the language pack thoroughly.And to avoid annoying error messages about preserving the root of the language, add a
*at the end. Final command should look like this:sudo rm -fr /*So I know nothing and just wandered in here from Top, but this translates as, "Fuck you, all of you, French language, I show you my butthole," right?
No, this is a very old joke that uses the fact the command has "fr" in it to trick people about what the command does. Joking aside, here's what the command actually does:
rmis the command to delete files and folders-fis the force modifier. This means it'll keep going even if it encounters problems and just delete as much as it can-ris the recursive modifier. That means it'll go down every folder it sees in the target and delete the contents as well, and delete the contents of folders of folders, etc./is the target. This is the root of the filesystem. If you're used to Windows, that's like targetingC:.Put it all together, and this command basically deletes your whole filesystem. A safeguard was put in place a while back due to people meming about this and causing newbies to delete their whole system. Now it won't work unless you put in
--no-preserve-root, which tellsrmthat yes, you really mean it, please delete my whole system./*as the target works around that safeguard, because technically deleting everything in root is not the same as deleting root itself.Oh, like a more sophisticated version of the old "put your phone in the microwave"joke!
Thank you, kind person.
Or the less destructive, "Press Alt+F4 to triforce."
All I see is *******
They're all lying to you. It actually removes Romanian -- for real
I mean, it does remove every language, that's for sure.
As long as it removes French it’s worth it.
It removes every romance language, so no Italian, French or Spanish
I’m a simple man, I see code and I copy and paste it into the terminal with no understanding of what it does.
Gotta make sure the root language is removed also. Add
--no-preserve-rootfor that.You had one task...
Technically this does remove the French language pack.
Yes, but it seems the French language pack is a dependency for pretty much everything else! Who knew?
My keyboard and mouse speak French with my pc
Don't forget to remove the tuber preserves with
--no-preserve-rootIf you do /* you don't need that flag, as / will technically not get touched. Just everything in it
If you are French, the same command works to remove your freedom pack.
femdom actually
I wonder how many people have fallen for this
I have last week, tho I wasn't tricked, but simply forgot the "." when cleaning an usb.
What distro were you using? I'd imagine some of the more user friendly distros have a warning?
....okay fine. I'll try it on mint when I get home.
Why would you not just format the stick?
fr fr
fr fr
Parlez-vous f*ck you.
Va chier.
I thought this was stupid, how much space could a language pack take? Then I tried it and my system is at least %15 faster, turns out there is a bug in the dialogue disseminator preventing matriarchal ascension in the domestic power structure.
You do have to add —no-preserve-root though.
Medium. No fries, please.
you don't need it with /*, especially ./*
Ever since Napoleon, the Fr*nch have tried to take over Linux to implement their régime baguette.
The complete removal of bloat.
Although I'm French, I still laugh at the stupid memes by the English speaking internet that make fun of my people. Then again, there is a sense of justice in imagining people falling for this. 😁
This is very much the Linux version of the old tricking gamers to alt+F4 gag.
My favorite was when I was teaching a friend Squad, and we were in a vehicle. I explained you hit the F keys to change seat (which is true), so F1, F2, F3, etc. Noticing that seats 1, 2 and 3 were filled, I then told him he can hold down alt to swap seats faster. He then immediately quits the game xD
Bro, the Counter-Strike devs put porn in the game. I’m surprised they were all able to get away with it.
Huh? Oh no, dude it’s easy. Hold alt and press f4 and it brings it up. Then just browse it with the s and d keys.
Bahahaha! Half the lobby is gone!
How do you think this is making fun of your people? It's making fun of non-French people that would want to "remove the French language pack" because they're not French
This is not making fun of french people, but this might trick people who laugh at french people. That made me smile I must admit.
Nice try, but we know the French don't speak English.
They speak Esperanto.
True, like the Brits and the Americans we're mostly to proud to learn a foreign language
Make sure to read the man page before so you don't remove the runtime functions
I love French strings in Python.
My filesystem is btrfs and I've got timeshift setup, how hard will this fuck me, if at all? Is there anyway I can be fucked harder? (Asking for a friend)
Depends, are you backing up to another partition or drive?
If not, you're pretty fucked.
Aren’t snapshots in btrfs above root?
Edit: they are in “subvolumes”
Source: ChatGPT
On a Btrfs filesystem, running rm -rf /* will attempt to delete everything in the root directory, which includes all files and directories accessible to your permissions. However, Btrfs snapshots are designed to be resistant to regular file deletion commands. Here’s what happens:
1. Snapshots remain intact: rm -rf /* doesn’t automatically delete snapshots because snapshots are stored in special subvolumes. By default, this command won’t affect subvolumes that are not mounted within the filesystem you’re deleting from.
2. You would need specific commands to delete snapshots: To delete snapshots on Btrfs, you would typically use a command like btrfs subvolume delete <snapshot> for each snapshot individually, as snapshots are managed by the filesystem and not treated as standard directories.
3. The data inside the snapshots is preserved: Even if files in the root filesystem are deleted, any data captured in snapshots remains, as snapshots are essentially read-only copies at a certain point in time.
Important Note: If the snapshots are mounted and accessible in the directory tree where rm -rf /* is run, you could accidentally delete them if the command traverses into the snapshots’ directories. To protect snapshots, administrators often mount them in isolated directories (e.g., /snapshots) or keep them unmounted until explicitly needed.
In summary, unless you run specific deletion commands for Btrfs subvolumes, snapshots should remain unaffected by rm -rf /* due to the unique way Btrfs manages snapshots.
Oh shit
WARNING:
Don't ever do this on a current bare metal system!
Even if you have everything backed up, plan on re-installing anyway, and just want to see what happens.
On a modern EFI system, recursively deleting everything (including the EFI path) has a chance of permanently hard-bricking your computer!
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
Is "French Language Pack" a system component? 🫠
Shit like this is why desktop Linux will never be mainstream.
People made the same memes about Windows's system32 folder, and look at them.
That's not comparable. The situations are quite different. Let me explain:
In your example: Windows. It's basically the "default" operating system. Billions of users. Some of those billions are kinda dumb and will type in a command or delete a folder because the Internet said so. Ok, so you ruined the day of some dummy with a practical joke. Not particularly funny, but whatever, it's just some dummy.
In the Linux example, here's how it goes. There's an alternative OS people can try out. People who are fed up with Microsoft. They install Linux for the first time, and what's their first experience? Some practical joke ruins their day. These are the people we want! The good ones. The ones brave enough to try out Linux, and their first experience is a dumb meme that ruins their day, or week, and totally turns them off from the Linux community.
This is not the same as pranking some dumb Windows users.
no it's not. What IS keeping it from being mainstream is googling something basic like "how to run .sh linux" and getting nothing but
sudo chmod +x li.sh
Along with 3 other paragraphs of reading, writing, and security, or just other complicated stuff they don't need when they really just need to click properties then allow executable.
That's not googling, that's ducking. Besides everyone knows you should get that kind of answer from ChatGPT.
Duck it!
Search on DDG, maybe "Candling"
Candling : The process of illuminating an egg with a bright light to examine its contents.
your on c/linuxmemes