this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I wonder what the sudo rm -rf equivalent for windows is

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft thinks it's uninstalling Edge.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's all you really need to do to break windows. /s

Edge/Internet Explorer is/were a cornerstone of any Windows install. Uninstall that and you can get all kinds of weird issues on your system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Like my auto-installed Copilot doesn't launch?

Oh no!

For some context, I've got a Windows install that I primarily keep around for VR gaming which I remove Edge from. That Copilot thing is the only "issue" I've noticed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Windows doesn't have sudo (not yet, at least) and privileges work a bit different as even as an administrator, you may not have full rights.

To overcome that obstacle, you'd need to run a shell as an administrator (hold CTRL+Shift, then use the start menu entry or right-click it and select run as administrator).

Next obstacle: We have a separate drive for each partition, but no root folder.

If we assume we're running on a laptop or PC with a single drive and a single partition*, then it's just

In cmd.exe:

del /F /S C:\

In Powershell:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -Path C:\

When you want to delete all (mounted) partitions/drives, you need to iterate over them. (Note that's from the top of my head, didn't check the script if it works).

In cmd.exe:

REM Not gonna do that, I'm no masochist

In Powershell:

Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem | Foreach-Object {
    Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -Path "$($_.Name):\"
}

Done. Mounting additional partitions before that is left as an exercise for the reader.

*note that even a standard installation of windows creates 3 partitions. One for the bootloader, one for the recovery system and then the system drive. Only the latter is mounted and will be deleted by this. The other two will still be intact.