Do you need slides and handout notes to explain a joke??

“There is no such thing as a Windows disk to kiss good by to all you data properly. I would have suspected that anyone running secure systems would have DBAN laying around.”

For crying out loud. If you want to destroy the data – just destroy the media. In the time it took to install this copy of Linux, the machine would be in bits and the disk would be well on the way to being slag or metal confetti.

@Pogson

“GNU/Linux was installed on a PC in the office as vandalism – Hmmmm…”

Not your usual position on these things. But refreshingly honest.

Agreed. Gentoo builds stuff to install… It works but is probably the slowest of any means of installation except delivering the bits by carrier pigeon.

(not dissing gentoo, it’s my metadistro of choice)

In the old days, I would approximate that action by deleting all data-files and then filling up the disc and deleting that file. There are likely to be fragments left but it’s a lot better than nothing. Experts can still recover data from the noise at the edge of tracks but the casual user will not be able to get the data back. DBAN and others do multiple writes to improve on this and can do the whole disc, not just the data areas.

I still don’t know how anyone could accidentally install GNU/Linux unless it was something like KNOPPIX which has a disc image on the CD or an unattended installation CD. It’s mighty few clicks to do a straight copy job and one can make an installation CD that asks no questions. That would be a peculiar item to have in an M$-shop.

Mongrol DBAN that is a Linux. Is truly the data all destroyed.

There is no such thing as a Windows disk to kiss good by to all you data properly. I would have suspected that anyone running secure systems would have DBAN laying around.

There have been a few cases of fools altering DBAN to be auto run without prompt for mass wipe then miss placing a DBAN disc configured like that and it was not clearly labelled. Best policy never do that to DBAN, Second best policy LABEL it clearly and have counted destruction of them at end, Fools policy don’t do either so 1 or more rouge disc gets to exist with no clear markings and its a matter of time until a machine goes by by due to human.

So far they have not said what version Linux.

It depends. Was it formatted to EXT4?

It would be interesting to know what is a vandals preference.