A number of users have reported that running "rm --no-preserve-root -rf /" not only deletes all their files (as expected), but also permanently bricks their computers (which is not). Tracing the issue revealed that the ultimate cause was that SystemD mounted the EFI pseudo-fs as read-write even when this FS was not listed in fstab, and deleting certain files in this pseudo-fs causes certain buggy, but very common, firmware not to POST anymore. A user reported this bug on SystemD's GitHub issue tracker, asking that the FS be mounted read-only instead of read-write, and said bug was immediately closed as invalid. The comment thread for the bug was locked shortly after. Discuss.
Links:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/02/01/running-a-single-delete-command-can-permanently-brick-laptops-from-inside-linux/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @02:50AM
Because I don't use the full Gnome or KDE suites, I've found it possible to have a Debian 8 desktop with most of my favourite software, without using systemd as the init. Because systemd caused one crash for me, I decided I didn't want it.
In /etc/apt/preferences I put
Package: systemd
Pin-Priority: -1
I installed the sysvinit package to replace systemd, and allowed the installation of the libsystemd0 package.