An add-on to ensure correct typing of commands


"Any time - any time - you type any remotely incorrect command, the interpreter creatively resolves it into rm -rf / and wipes your hard drive."
from the README


We've all had the issue of sending a text message and mangling the input. Almost every text I send winds up with words mangled almost out of recognition. Thankfully, autocorrect usually manages to grasp my meaning and offers me a corrected alternative. But imagine if instead of correcting me it bricked the phone by removing the software.

Now imagine that you're typing a command at a terminal prompt. Let's just say I want to run the command below, xclip -o | wc -w; let's also say that either my keyboard failed to register a keystroke or I fumbled the typing and typed clip -o | wc -w. Some distributions will kindly offer an alteration or a correction; some ignore it and allow you to "send" that incorrect command to the interpreter for execution. Under normal circumstances, you'd see a message like "if 'clip' is not a typo you can use command-not-found to lookup the package that contains it, like this: 'cnf clip' With Suicide Linux installed, the command itself is transmogrified into rm -rf /, which recursively removes everything from the root directory down, i.e. it deletes the contents of the operating system drive, effectively killing the OS.

Now I have to say at this point that Suicide Linux is not actually a distribution of Linux, rather an installable software container that works its evil magic. If you want to play with it, it can be installed from https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux. You will also need to have Docker installed to use it.

Why would I want this?

In the words of the author, "It's a game. Like walking a tightrope. You have to see how long you can continue to use the operating system before losing all your data."; this suicide may not be painless

You might want to ensure that you take care to check yourself; it would certainly be an incentive to double-check both your knowledge of the system and the accuracy of your typing. You might be doing it as a dare or a personal challenge. Maybe you're a poor typist and a masochist and just enjoy reinstalling your OS every once in a while; I don't know, I'm not in your head and I'm not judging you. Perhaps you're tired of your Linux Life and really want out (for some whatever reason).

If you want to go ahead and try it, the responsibility is yours. All I have done is show you that it exists. Also, yes, I need to do a writeup on Docker. Nag me, now.






$ xclip -o | wc -w
426