[Lex-2008]

worth noting that it can be trivially workarounded by adding an asterisk at the end: `rm -rf /*` still works.

[jeroenhd]

Fair enough, but on the other hand there's nothing preventing you from just putting --no-preserve-root in the command either. I see the feature as something to prevent accidents, not as a way to secure the rm command.

[tomjakubowski]

That version will helpfully leave behind any .files lingering in /