Duplicate folders on root level

[Alex23]

Hello experts,

I was playing around in the Terminal yesterday learning some basic navigation commands from some video tutorials.
I was able to display all the Folders and Files in the Root of my computer. I was also able to copy that info to a text file.

Looking at it today, I think there are some old folder and possible a couple files that have nothing to do in the root.
Some of that stuff stems from the migration process when changed computers in 2009 and then 2015.

For instance I've got two "home" folders.

dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1 Dec 21 20:43 home
dr-xr-xr-x@ 2 root wheel 64 Sep 22 2009 home (depuis l’ancien Mac)


As well as two .DS_Store

-rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 14340 Dec 21 21:18 .DS_Store
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 root wheel 15364 Sep 30 2009 .DS_Store (depuis l’ancien Mac)

Would this stuff slow down the system?
Should I be worried from a security standpoint?
Is there a best practice on how to deal with duplicate folders in the root after a migration?

Thanks,
Alexandre

 

[KALLT]

I cannot think of a reason why they would have any effect on your current system.

If they are not protected by System Integrity Protection presently, then you could just remove them:

sudo rmdir /home\ (d*

sudo rm /.DS_Store\ (d*

macOS Catalina or macOS Big Sur might move them away for you as well (into /Library/SystemMigration)

 

[Alex23]

I cannot think of a reason why they would have any effect on your current system.

If they are not protected by System Integrity Protection presently, then you could just remove them:

sudo rmdir /home\ (d*

sudo rm /.DS_Store\ (d*

macOS Catalina or macOS Big Sur might move them away for you as well (into /Library/SystemMigration)

Hello Kallt,
Ok I see.
I guess the SIP would prevent removal even with a Command line in the terminal?
Thanks.

 

[KALLT]

Yes. You’d have to disable it first by booting into Recovery.