I guess part of the reason the hoax is annoying is that it usually couldn't happen. Recent versions of GNU coreutils rm will refuse to delete /, in order to avo

I guess part of the reason the hoax is annoying is that it usually couldn't happen. Recent versions of GNU coreutils rm will refuse to delete /, in order to avoid this kind of bug [1]. So if he was on a linux system like he described, his bug should not have had that effect. The question spreads misinformation (although a fairly harmless kind). [1] This was added in 2006, apparently: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=aff5a4f2ab86f2a51db8f1d1d734406dc4bd8fb3 http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=af...