The command to use depends on which distribution of Linux you’re using. For Debian based Linux distributions, the command is deluser, and for the rest of the Linux world, it is userdel.

Actually, on Ubuntu both commands are available. I half-expected one to be an alias of the other, but they are distinct binaries.

commands: type deluser type userdel

Although they’re both available, the recommendation is to use deluser on Debian-derived distributions:

“userdel is a low level utility for removing users. On Debian, administrators should usually use deluser(8) instead.”

That’s clear enough, so the command to use on this Ubuntu computer is deluser. Because we also want their home directory to be removed we’re using the --remove-home flag:

command: sudo deluser –remove-home “name”

The command to use for non-Debian distributions is userdel, with the --remove flag:sudo userdel –remove “name”

All traces of user account eric have been erased. We can check that the /home/"name"/directory has been removed with: ls /home