The Linux userdel command is a very simple command. It just did what the name says, delete user. View the manual page and you can see that, in Slackware synopsis, userdel command has only one option:

    SYNOPSIS
    userdel [-r] login
    
    DESCRIPTION
    The  userdel  command  modifies  the system account files,
    deleting all entries that refer to login.  The named  user
    must  exist.   The options which apply to the userdel com-
    mand are:
    
    -r     Files in the user's home directory will be  removed 
    along with the home directory itself and the user's
    mail spool.  Files located in  other  file  systems
    will  have to be searched for and deleted manually.
    

The -r option when used with userdel command will removed user's home directory and the mail spool. If there are other files in other directory, you have to remove them manually.

Let's practice using this command now. We are going to delete the user account we created just now, karim user account. As you can see from the manual above, the format for userdel is userdel -r login.

    root@slackware:~# userdel -r karim 
    

That's it. You can no longer login with that username.

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