> These users are probably moving over from Windows anyway, and already
have that deep-seeded hatred of warning dialog boxes, so even just this
one probably isn't going to help them.

So instead of asking the user if they really want to delete their entire
filesystem... we should just assume that's what they really meant and do
it without asking?  I'm not sure how you think this an improvement.

> The point is that the intended effect of this change won't happen, as
the method is already proven ineffective

Shouldn't synonyms like "sudo rm -fr ../../*" in the home directory be
prevented, too?  It should be based on the actual effect the command
has, not a particular string.  If not, I would think that's a bug.

> and there are literally thousands of other possible command sequences
that can hose a system in the same way, and having confirmation for them
all just makes easy

There's protecting the user against pasting malicious commands, and
there's protecting the user from the results of an unfortunate typo.
Even experienced users make stupid mistakes like this
(http://www.justpasha.org/folk/rm.html), which is why "preserve root" is
the default behavior in GNU rm:

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Treating-_002f-
specially.html

If "the *nix philosophy" means "the user deserves to lose their life's
work over a simple mistake", then I don't see any value in keeping that
particular "philosophy" alive.

Maybe you'd be happier with something like Arch Linux?

-- 
rm does not preserve root by default
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/174283
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