[Hurtak]

How long ago was this? AFAIK the `rm` command in almost every linux distro these days will NOT let you delete `/` unless you add `--no-preserve-root` parameter.

[smhenderson]

I think the key take away in the parent comment is:

"This was how I knew OSX was a real Un*x"

[usmannk]

Will it still start recursing and deleting most of the stuff owned by your user? That's arguably more important than the system files!

[wongarsu]

No:

    # rm -rf /
    rm: it is dangerous to operate recursively on '/'
    rm: use --no-preserve-root to override this failsafe

There's still lots of ways to screw up a rm, like "rm -rf /*" or deleting your entire home directory, but a space after the initial / was apparently common enough that they eventually put a big failsafe for that in the GNU version.

[marginalia_nu]

I've done something like this, dunno, may have been around 2000.