moreutils
Ranked 5 of 5 command-line toolkits by recommenders
A free collection of small Unix command-line tools, such as vipe for editing pipe contents, that people keep in their regular installs.
A free collection of small Unix command-line tools, such as vipe for editing pipe contents, that people keep in their regular installs.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not 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
Essential utilities for everyday shell work
“These are absolute must haves, but I really wish parallel didn't collide with the super useful GNU/parallel.”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Moreutils: The utilities package every Unix/Linux/Mac OS developer should know” “Has been in my regular installs for years”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Moreutils: The utilities package every Unix/Linux/Mac OS developer should know” Small Unix tools for shell pipelines
“An alternative to the paste commands is vipe (vi + pipe?) from moreutils which opens an $EDITOR that returns the contents once saved and closed.”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Handling secrets (somewhat) securely in shells” “Originally intended to be used in crontabs, it executes a command and only outputs its output if it fails.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “LLM=True”
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 coreutils | 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 | — | — |
| moreutilsThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Has been in my regular installs for years”
“These are absolute must haves, but I really wish parallel didn't collide with the super useful GNU/parallel.”
“Originally intended to be used in crontabs, it executes a command and only outputs its output if it fails.”
“'sh' isn't in moreutils and is harder to remember”
“An alternative to the paste commands is vipe (vi + pipe?) from moreutils which opens an $EDITOR that returns the contents once saved and closed.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.