GNU coreutils
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 5 command-line toolkits
People recommend these standard command-line tools for text and files because they are stable, long-lived and work the same across scripts. The most common caveat is GNU-specific flags and behavior that do not carry over to other systems.
People recommend these standard command-line tools for text and files because they are stable, long-lived and work the same across scripts. The most common caveat is GNU-specific flags and behavior that do not carry over to other systems.
65 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 46
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 46 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Stable, battle-tested tools
“It's one of the most stable pieces of Linux infrastructure. It's as solid as it gets.”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust” “Coreutuils are titanium rock stable tools that no one asked to rewrite.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” “GNU utils is battle tested, well reviewed, and STABLE.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” - Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils”
Long-running and reliable for decades
“The C version has been around for ages, works well, and is GPL'ed.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” “They do one thing and do it well very likely for another 50 years.”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 in “Updated practice for review articles and position papers in ArXiv CS category” “the ones written in C are the most reliable”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “A Modern Web App in C” Composable tools for text processing
“a system that just works across many domains, you don't need 100 different "apps" that each try to implement the features you get when chaining together the coreutils”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing” “Access to a well-established set of tools for operating on unstructured text”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “git's –end-of-options Flag” “Those are my go-to tools for quick-and-dirty log analysis.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Coreutils for Windows” Solid security track record
“Historically, GNU coreutils has been pretty good with symbolic links and avoiding TOCTOU races.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils” “I'd like to see literally any evidence that coreutils has a security problem”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Released” “this is exactly the class of bug that does not exist in GNU coreutils”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Inconsistent, GNU-specific behavior
“The gnu runtime seems like a messy, badly specified hairball of hacky, inconsistent scripts to me.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” “This isn't portable though, it's a GNU-specific 'smart' things.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils” “inconsistent GNU halfassery”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Wine ported to OpenBSD” Slow maintainers and resistance to change
“These tools' maintainers seemed very inertial to me. So maybe this is why many (low importance, I assume) issues persists there for a long time.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “Big Fish: Exploiting a 37-Year-Old Kernel Bug in OpenBSD” “these tools are controlled by naysayers who want everything to stay as it was in the 80s”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Released” Too many flags and jargon
“GNU coreutils have man pages that are correct and list all the flags at least, but suffer from GNU jargonisms”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers” “GNU coreutils have miriads of useless flags and missing one actually useful flag LoL.”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Postgres Postmaster does not scale” Past security bugs and test failures
“They tried that with coreutils and look what happened. More CVEs.”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Twenty One Zero-Days in FFmpeg” “split --line-bytes has a user controlled heap buffer overflow”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch”
Other command-line toolkits people recommend
The four most recommended other command-line toolkits, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GNU coreutilsThis page | 46 | 19 | 71% | 12 | — | Approved |
| uutils coreutils | 44 | 118 | 27% | 12 | — | — |
| BusyBox | 27 | 4 | 87% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Microsoft Coreutils for Windows | 10 | 12 | 45% | 1 | — | — |
| moreutils | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 74 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“inconsistent GNU halfassery”
“These tools' maintainers seemed very inertial to me. So maybe this is why many (low importance, I assume) issues persists there for a long time.”
“the existence of open source tools like coreutils gives us time”
“the ones written in C are the most reliable”
“there is a developer who has not installed gnutils and put them earlier in the PATH”
“the GNU core utilities having so many more conveniences and options than the Solaris equivalents”
“memory safety bugs from 40 year old widely used/tested software”
“This isn't portable though, it's a GNU-specific 'smart' things.”
“Historically, GNU coreutils has been pretty good with symbolic links and avoiding TOCTOU races.”
“this is exactly the class of bug that does not exist in GNU coreutils”
“GNU 'sort' is fairly conservative in how many threads it will use by default”
“A COLLECTION of useful programs alongside a kernel such as Linux.”
“Access to a well-established set of tools for operating on unstructured text”
“They tried that with coreutils and look what happened. More CVEs.”
“Those are my go-to tools for quick-and-dirty log analysis.”
“I was able to install coreutils in just a few seconds and carry on”
“Some of said slop recently caused GNU coreutils test suite to fail”
“a tool which stays steady in your hand - or script - is invaluable.”
“split --line-bytes has a user controlled heap buffer overflow”
“these tools are controlled by naysayers who want everything to stay as it was in the 80s”
“I'd like to see literally any evidence that coreutils has a security problem”
“if you are in MacOS try running gdate instead (if it is installed)”
“cut them with perfect precision using the head and tail commands from GNU coreutils”
“I'd say the GNU core utilities sometimes have better docs for their equivalent commands.”
“They were much more successful in userland (coreutils, gcc and the toolchain, gdb, Emacs, to name a few).”
“It's one of the most stable pieces of Linux infrastructure. It's as solid as it gets.”
“a system that just works across many domains, you don't need 100 different "apps" that each try to implement the features you get when chaining together the coreutils”
“GNU coreutils have man pages that are correct and list all the flags at least, but suffer from GNU jargonisms”
“GNU coreutils have miriads of useless flags and missing one actually useful flag LoL.”
“I like how the GNU coreutils seem to have done. They use real, 1024-byte kilobytes by default”
“prefixing my path with GNU coreutils works well and saves me from many e.g. sed quirks”
“Coreutuils are titanium rock stable tools that no one asked to rewrite.”
“The C version has been around for ages, works well, and is GPL'ed.”
“the known correct, and stable GNU coreutils”
“it's helped improve the stability of the GNU coreutils by clarifying intended behavior and adding test cases”
“GNU utils is battle tested, well reviewed, and STABLE.”
“The gnu runtime seems like a messy, badly specified hairball of hacky, inconsistent scripts to me.”
“I love GNU coreutils, and although it's far from my favorite shell”
“They do one thing and do it well very likely for another 50 years.”
“a strong copyleft license and a solid decentralized workflow”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.