Linux’s terminal commands are powerful, and Linux won’t ask you for confirmation if you run a command that won’t break your system. It’s not uncommon to see trolls online recommending new Linux users run these commands as a joke.
Learning the commands you shouldn’t run can help protect you from trolls while increasing your understanding of how Linux works. This isn’t an exhaustive guide, and the commands here can be remixed in a variety of ways.
http://www.howtogeek.com/125157/8-deadly-commands-you-should-never-run-on-linux/
Links to the same article were posted both by
menotu and by
OldGuy in September last year. But it was a BS article then and it still is.
Although it would be logical if it did,
rm -rf / does
not remove everything in the root directory;
bash won't let it. And
AS was even brave enough to test it a year ago:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,93436.msg866905.html#msg866905.
And
mv ~ /dev/null does
not move your home folder into
/dev/null. I've tested that myself: the system first asked me whether I really wanted to
overwrite /dev/null, and when I answered "yes" it simply informed me that
mv: cannot overwrite non-directory `/dev/null' with directory `~'
Similar things could be said about several other points in the article. Of course we are talking about dangerous commands, but not always
that dangerous.
