ss
Shares rank 48 of 57 command-line tools by recommenders
Built-in Linux tool for listing sockets and ports, with filters that replace grep. Caveat: default output is hard to read and parse.
5 people recommended ss in Hacker News comments and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 13 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 10 of those comments still count.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- mixed feelings
- 0
- warn against or regret it
- 4
The record
Recommended in 3 of 12 months
In 4 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not 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
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
- Recommended in 4 threadsNeeds 5 or more, not met.
- The biggest thread supplies 40% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 9 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
More reliable, and liked once learned
“ss is a bit different and is a bit more reliable.”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” “I've gotten used to ss now, and I quite like it”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” Useful for troubleshooting network services
“some of the most often misunderstood or unknown tools that I find useful for troubleshooting”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 on Hacker News
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Default output hard for humans
“Like, ss without any options shows such arcane, rarely needed details as send/receive queue size but not the application socket belongs to.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” “it's not good for humans, it's not great for scripts”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” Text output brittle for scripts
“parsing text intended for human readability and not machine processing is brittle”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Network Monitor – a GUI to spot anomalous connections on your Linux” Confusing flags and defaults
“they managed to pick all the wrong defaults”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat”
Other command-line tools people recommend
The four most recommended other command-line 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.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fzf | 68 | 7 | 5 | 93% | 12 | — | Approved |
| GitHub CLI | 66 | 10 | 45 | 59% | 12 | — | — |
| grep | 53 | 9 | 19 | 74% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Atuin | 51 | 6 | 21 | 71% | 9 | — | Approved |
| ssThis page | 5 | 0 | 4 | 56% | 3 | — | — |
Also compared with jq, ImageMagick, sudo and sed.
What people said
9 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“some of the most often misunderstood or unknown tools that I find useful for troubleshooting”
“ss' is quite a bit more obnoxious than 'netstat”
“ss” also has filters, no need for grep”
“Like, ss without any options shows such arcane, rarely needed details as send/receive queue size but not the application socket belongs to.”
“I've gotten used to ss now, and I quite like it”
“ss is a bit different and is a bit more reliable.”
“it's not good for humans, it's not great for scripts”
“they managed to pick all the wrong defaults”
“parsing text intended for human readability and not machine processing is brittle”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.