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 as
fork() {
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)
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.
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.
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.