GNU Parallel
Shares rank 22 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Command-line tool that runs jobs in parallel, with options like --dry-run and --eta, and free software people recommend for batch work. Critics note its citation notice printed on each run.
Command-line tool that runs jobs in parallel, with options like --dry-run and --eta, and free software people recommend for batch work. Critics note its citation notice printed on each run.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 59%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Runs many jobs in parallel
“you can use something like GNU Parallel to launch processes in parallel to use all those 288 cpus.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (2014)” “use gnu parallel for running concurrent jobs”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Ghostty is leaving GitHub” “trivial to fan out on each maildir”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Parsync, a tool for parallel SSH transfers – 7x faster than rsync” Works well with rsync
“piped to gnu-parallel rsync is fine.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “4x faster network file sync with rclone (vs rsync) (2025)” “we drove rsync with GNU parallel”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Syq – copy files between machines fast (better than rsync)” Replaces xargs and scripting hacks
“I love gnu parallel. The --dry-run flag of parallel made me confident to do more batch processing than I ever did with xargs.”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “When I think of those obscenely ugly scripting hacks I used to do back in the day”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “Parsync, a tool for parallel SSH transfers – 7x faster than rsync” Dry-run and progress options
“I love gnu parallel. The --dry-run flag of parallel made me confident to do more batch processing than I ever did with xargs.”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “pass to gnu parallel (mostly for --eta and --tmuxpane)”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Citation nag and EULA prompts
“Edgy citation farming. Anyone using GNU Parallel in scientific research is "required" to cite it in their research using this name.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “GNU Parallel 20260622 ('Rape Gang Inquiry') Released” “the author IMHO goes too far, in requiring each user to type "will cite" first time they use the app”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “GNU Parallel citation request now asks you cite "Epstein files"” “I keep hoping people will stop using gnu parallel or that distros will remove its citation begging.”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Moreutils: The utilities package every Unix/Linux/Mac OS developer should know” - Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
- Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
Unreliable, breaks or causes problems
“Every single damn time I try parallel and decide to give it another chance, something ends up not working or causing a problem.”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “I somehow managed to delete ~10k pictures while trying to use parallel to resize them.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “the Ctrl+C handling is just utterly broken”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” - Comment from 1 Apr 2026 on Hacker News
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, 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.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
28 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I keep hoping people will stop using gnu parallel or that distros will remove its citation begging.”
“we drove rsync with GNU parallel”
“Try reading some time. It's pretty great.”
“the Ctrl+C handling is just utterly broken”
“I somehow managed to delete ~10k pictures while trying to use parallel to resize them.”
“Also note that it only figures this out first time, after which it’s cached on disk.”
“parallel: Warning: Finding the maximal command line length. This may take up to 1 minute.”
“dumps some kind of begging message into your output each time you invoke it”
“it required accepting a Eula, which is annoying”
“pass to gnu parallel (mostly for --eta and --tmuxpane)”
“Every single damn time I try parallel and decide to give it another chance, something ends up not working or causing a problem.”
“I love how it's free software and how I can patch out the obnoxious citation notice.”
“I love gnu parallel. The --dry-run flag of parallel made me confident to do more batch processing than I ever did with xargs.”
“Edgy citation farming. Anyone using GNU Parallel in scientific research is "required" to cite it in their research using this name.”
“use gnu parallel for running concurrent jobs”
“it's been small enough of an issue for me to care”
“tools like parallel fall apart”
“parallel optimizes for "breadth of features"”
“the author IMHO goes too far, in requiring each user to type "will cite" first time they use the app”
“Yes, to my extreme frustration.”
“(vs ~6% for GNU Parallel)”
“When I think of those obscenely ugly scripting hacks I used to do back in the day”
“trivial to fan out on each maildir”
“piped to gnu-parallel rsync is fine.”
“would have solved this problem”
“you can use something like GNU Parallel to launch processes in parallel to use all those 288 cpus.”
“for the Perl fans, parallel”
“isn’t easy to do with just GNU Parallel (trust me, I’ve tried)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.