Every time this gets reposted, I like to reply with this:
:(){:|:&};:Run it if you dare lol
Why my cpu making so much noise?
It's a workout for your CPU. It will make it grow big and strong.
it's a regex loop
Extra room heater, how thoughtful of you
I don't know what that is, but it feels to me like it might be a fork bomb.
Edit: Yep, fork bomb.
Because I didn't know what a fork bomb was:
a fork bomb is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack wherein a process continually replicates itself to deplete available system resources, slowing down or crashing the system due to resource starvation.
[...]
A classic example of a fork bomb is one written in Unix shell
:(){ :|:& };:, possibly dating back to 1999, which can be more easily understood asfork() { fork | fork & } fork
> > In it, a function is defined (fork()) as calling itself (fork), then piping (|) its result into itself, all in a background job (&). > > The code using a colon `:` as the function name is not valid in a shell as defined by POSIX, which only permits alphanumeric characters and underscores in function names. However, its usage is allowed in GNU Bash as an extension. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)
Shouldn't this run into the ulimit and stop?
Can confirm, it takes up so much space it's surprising they install it by default, my drive is like 99% free now.
Unrelated, but none of my files are in my documents folder anymore and I can't run steam, anyone know if they relied on the French language pack?
I hope this is a joke if not, I am so sorry 😭😭😭😭
Obviously a joke
It was a joke, this time.
But back in my university days (holy shit I feel old, that was around 17 years ago), when flash drives were still new ish technology. I had installed a Linux live cd, which was a brand new idea back then, on my USB stick that also contained a bunch of my files.
I thought it would be a fun idea to rm -rf / to see what it would do to a live cd environment.
Then I realised it was not a fun idea as I started to see the names of my project documents being deleted.
it's because it deleted everything
It will… do that…
task failed successfully i guess
Technically the truth
Only if it's installed
After the command ends, the French language pack is not installed
smh these days we all sudo rm fr fr
I mean... this is technically true.
It did, indeed, remove all traces of French language from my system.
100% success.
it removed everything
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.
copied from the original post but was exactly what was going through my mind
Yeah it's a joke that's at least a decade old, probably over two decades old.
And one of the most important aspects of comedy is knowing your audience. If this was said to a group of linux sysadmins I guess it's not dangerous, but it's still an old joke so not going to get much of a laugh. But if it's said to people new to linux, then it can cause damage. So it's either not funny (we all heard that one before) or an asshole prank, so not funny and malicious.
Absolutely agreed. I caught major flak the last time that I saw this. Not a fan of setting up ignorant newbs to be laughed at and potentially need to write fresh resumes. Yeah, you shouldn't take a meme at face value for advice on your professional life but, it just comes across as a bit mean-spirited.
This is not malicious because it will not work. You'd need
--no-preserve-rootto actually do anything.Edit seems I was wrong
The use of /* might get around that, because the shell expands it to /usr /var /lib /home etc.
The one time I saw the joke justified is when someone asked a forum for help cheating on their code interview.
In 20+ years of linuxing, I've never thought about putting the f first until now.
Imagine my mixed emotions when I’ve been doing ‘ls -la’ since I remember and watch someone do ‘ls -al’.
I cut my teeth on DOS. I use dir instead of ls. Please don't shame me.
I always do - lha or -la, but sometimes I did -a and I want the L, so I reuse the old command and add a l, making it -al.
I use -al because it's in alphabetical order and reminds me of "all".
I always put the f last, as in first the whole command, then go back and write the -rf, just because if I accidentally press enter I don't want an uncompleted path to be destroyed.
The French 🤢🤮
Ah, the French
This is
Sudo - Super user do; or root < admin
RM - Remove
F - forced, it won’t warn you that you are deleting your system
R - Recursively, it will delete every directory hereafter
/ - the start of your system…so everything but it not being there would do this as well
Never rm -rf if you actually need to do it for something then you know well enough that it is necessary
Ah the linux version of delete system32 or charge your phone in the microwave.
It's more like delete C:/
System32 and everything else.
Thank you for the breakdown. Always wondered what those commands meant
It was a joke, this time.
But back in my university days (holy shit I feel old, that was around 17 years ago), when flash drives were still new ish technology. I had installed a Linux live cd, which was a brand new idea back then, on my USB stick that also contained a bunch of my files.
I thought it would be a fun idea to rm -rf / to see what it would do to a live cd environment.
Then I realised it was not a fun idea as I started to see the names of my project documents being deleted.
Smartest thing to save space tbh. The french language pack is huge!
This comment said:
Smartest thing to save space tbh. The french language pack is huge!
Is this, like, the delete system 32 of Linux?
To me this is no different than telling someone to kill themselves as a joke.
It was funny years ago as a teenager but now it's just mean and a dick move.
