If I have a file that I wish to delete, is there a setting that I can make which will delete the file instead of sending it to Trash?
Administrator: There is no user provided way to change the standard settings for deleting files. Depending on how or why you want to delete the file the best way is to open a terminal (Press CTRL-ALT-T simultaneously) and then follow the below process description:
(You will need to type "sudo rm..." and enter your username password in order to be able to delete files stored outside of your logged in "home" folder.
Commands for deleting files
The terminal command for deleting file(s) is rm. The general format of this command is rm [-f|i|I|q|R|r|v] file...
rm removes a file if you specify a correct path for it and if you don't, then it displays an error message and moves on to the next file. Sometimes you may not have the write permissions for a file, in that case it asks you for confirmation. Type yes if you want to delete it.
Options
-f - deletes read-only files immediately without any confirmation.If both -f and -i are used then the one which appears last in the terminal is used by rm.
-i - prompts for confirmation before deleting every file before entering a sub-directory if used with -R or -r. If both -f and -i are used then the one which appears last in the terminal is used by rm.
-q - suppresses all the warning messages however error messages are still displayed. However the exit status is modified in case of any errors.
-R - means delete recursively and is used to delete the directory tree starting at the directory specified i.e. it deletes the specified directory along with its sub-directory and files.
-r - same as -R.
-v - displays the file names on the output as they are being processed.
-I - prompts every time when an attempt is made to delete for more than 3 files at a time or while removing recursively.
Precautions
Never type sudo rm -R / or sudo rm -r / as it deletes all the data in the root directory and will delete the data of all the mounted volumes until you want to wipe of everything from your system.
sudo rm -f /* also does blunders with any Linux system.