An interactive explainer

You didn't delete that file. You just tore up its library card.

rm feels like destruction. The name vanishes and the space comes back. But almost nothing is destroyed. Delete removes a directory entry and lowers a counter. The inode and every byte sit on disk, fully intact, until something else overwrites them. That gap is exactly why recovery tools work, and why 'empty the trash' is not the same as 'shred'. Follow one file from name to bytes, delete it, then bring it back.

Filesystems · Inodes · Deletion and recovery

Systems · Beginner · 9 min · The secret lives of deleted files — an interactive explainer on ViLearn, with a simulation and a knowledge check. All explainers.