# uutils coreutils Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/uutils-coreutils/ 26 people recommended uutils coreutils in Hacker News comments, 12 had mixed feelings and 108 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 12 months, in 13 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it. Rust rewrite of GNU coreutils, MIT licensed and free, praised for memory safety and improving compatibility; critics cite new bugs and security regressions. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - New bugs and regressions versus GNU (4 comments in the sample): "What's the point of a "rewrite in Rust" when it introduces bugs that either never existed in the original or were fixed already?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945317)) "A rewrite necessarily has orders of magnitude more bugs and vulnerabilities than a decades-old well-maintained codebase" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945641)) "the rewrite of coreutils into Rust has been pretty chaotic. Lots of bugs in the new code that weren't there in the old" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109971)) - Incompatible with GNU edge cases (3 comments in the sample): "Canonical wanted (still wants?) to use a coreutils implementation where "rm ./" would print "invalid input" while silently deleting the directory anyway" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945909)) "It was the effort to maintain a port that is both niche and has edge-case incompatibilities with GNU coreutils" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49968410)) "If something as basic as "rm ./" is broken, the word "extensive" does not apply to whatever testing there was." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47951461)) - Code quality and authorship concerns (3 comments in the sample): "some contributions had carried comments and code over from GNU coreutils, against our own rule that uutils is an original implementation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49892999)) "the people writing these tools are not good software developers, certainly not sufficiently good for this line of work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945059)) "they’re replacing it with code written by amateurs that performs worse and already has a worse security track record" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49699685)) - Race-condition security vulnerabilities (2 comments in the sample): "it introduced a bunch of new vulnerabilities, mostly caused by creating race conditions between checking a filesystem path and using the path for something" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48058517)) "Iirc the bugs had to do with linux system details like fs toctou and other things you'd only find out about in production." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120615)) ## Why people recommend it - Memory-safe replacement for GNU tools (3 comments in the sample): "I’m glad rust coreutils is slowly working through these compatibility issues so we don’t have to pay for memory safety" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46265871)) "Despite the bugs and incompatibilities, Canonical seems to have decided that the memory safety of uutils is worth it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47958668)) "there's now an MIT-licensed Rust rewrite of GNU coretools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45910965)) - Free, MIT-licensed, no copyleft (2 comments in the sample): "uutils (Which is MIT licensed and has the stated goal to replace all GNU userspace" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46786208)) "it's GPL free. which is good for embedded, the business side of it. like cars." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708895)) - Compatible with most shell scripts (2 comments in the sample): "most shell scripts people actually write probably already work on top of this port" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46265925)) "uutils is way more compatible with the GNU tools than Apple's tools are" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47501767)) - Bugs fixed quickly after release (1 comment in the sample): "the coreutils rewrite is going well all things considered, bugs are fixed quickly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46048105)) ## Other command-line toolkits people recommend - [GNU coreutils](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnu-coreutils/): 44 recommend, 2 mixed, 19 criticize - [BusyBox](https://hackerapproved.com/p/busybox/): 17 recommend, 9 mixed, 4 criticize - [Microsoft Coreutils for Windows](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coreutils-for-windows/): 8 recommend, 1 mixed, 12 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "uutils coreutils", https://hackerapproved.com/p/uutils-coreutils/ (26 recommend, 12 mixed, 108 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.