uutils coreutils
Ranked 2 of 5 command-line toolkits by recommenders
Rust rewrite of GNU coreutils, MIT licensed and free, praised for memory safety and improving compatibility; critics cite new bugs and security regressions.
Rust rewrite of GNU coreutils, MIT licensed and free, praised for memory safety and improving compatibility; critics cite new bugs and security regressions.
162 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 44
- criticize it
- 118
- approval share
- 27%
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 doesn’t carry the badge
- 44 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not 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
Memory-safe replacement for GNU tools
“I'm glad rust coreutils is slowly working through these compatibility issues so we don't have to pay for memory safety”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” “Despite the bugs and incompatibilities, Canonical seems to have decided that the memory safety of uutils is worth it.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” “there's now an MIT-licensed Rust rewrite of GNU coretools”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software” Free, MIT-licensed, no copyleft
“uutils (Which is MIT licensed and has the stated goal to replace all GNU userspace )”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company” “it's GPL free. which is good for embedded, the business side of it. like cars.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils” Compatible with most shell scripts
“most shell scripts people actually write probably already work on top of this port”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Rust Coreutils 0.5.0 Release: 87.75% compatibility with GNU Coreutils” “uutils is way more compatible with the GNU tools than Apple's tools are”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating” Bugs fixed quickly after release
“the coreutils rewrite is going well all things considered, bugs are fixed quickly”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “APT Rust requirement raises questions” “these bugs were caught before being added to a stable release, so overall fine.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Rust in Android: move fast and fix things”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
New bugs and regressions versus GNU
“What's the point of a "rewrite in Rust" when it introduces bugs that either never existed in the original or were fixed already?”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” “Insane to be adding complexity, breaking compatibility and introducing new bugs to software that needs to function correctly.”
Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Pointing at the error: compiler-style diagnostics in uutils coreutils” “A rewrite necessarily has orders of magnitude more bugs and vulnerabilities than a decades-old well-maintained codebase”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” - Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “Problems with the Rust Language”
- Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Ion: Modern System Shell in Rust”
Race-condition security vulnerabilities
“it introduced a bunch of new vulnerabilities, mostly caused by creating race conditions between checking a filesystem path and using the path for something”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit” “Iirc the bugs had to do with linux system details like fs toctou and other things you'd only find out about in production.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “CERT is releasing six CVEs for serious security vulnerabilities in dnsmasq” Incompatible with GNU edge cases
“Canonical wanted (still wants?) to use a coreutils implementation where "rm ./" would print "invalid input" while silently deleting the directory anyway”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” “it was the effort to maintain a port that is both niche and has edge-case incompatibilities with GNU coreutils”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “OpenBSD Developers Reject Uutils Coreutils” “If something as basic as "rm ./" is broken, the word "extensive" does not apply to whatever testing there was.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” Code quality and authorship concerns
“some contributions had carried comments and code over from GNU coreutils, against our own rule that uutils is an original implementation”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “Rust coreutils acknowledges copying of GNU GPL code” “the people writing these tools are not good software developers, certainly not sufficiently good for this line of work”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Bugs Rust Won't Catch” “they're replacing it with code written by amateurs that performs worse and already has a worse security track record”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils”
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 coreutilsThis page | 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 212 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It also did find bugs in the old code and contributed tests to their suite.”
“the rewrite of coreutils into Rust has been pretty chaotic. Lots of bugs in the new code that weren't there in the old”
“it was the effort to maintain a port that is both niche and has edge-case incompatibilities with GNU coreutils”
“some contributions had carried comments and code over from GNU coreutils, against our own rule that uutils is an original implementation”
“it's GPL free. which is good for embedded, the business side of it. like cars.”
“they're replacing it with code written by amateurs that performs worse and already has a worse security track record”
“It's also making improvements like better internalization support, better error messages”
“Insane to be adding complexity, breaking compatibility and introducing new bugs to software that needs to function correctly.”
“Insane to be adding complexity, breaking compatibility and introducing new bugs”
“I like the rust rewrite of the coreutls, but I HATE that they picked MIT instead of GPLv3”
“you might want to take a look at the rust-coreutils for a starter”
“uutils enables fully Windows native commands in the subset of system calls and disk structure Windows supports.”
“Iirc the bugs had to do with linux system details like fs toctou and other things you'd only find out about in production.”
“it introduced a bunch of new vulnerabilities, mostly caused by creating race conditions between checking a filesystem path and using the path for something”
“Despite the bugs and incompatibilities, Canonical seems to have decided that the memory safety of uutils is worth it.”
“If something as basic as "rm ./" is broken, the word "extensive" does not apply to whatever testing there was.”
“It is very common for applications written in Rust to be split in multiple reusable crates.”
“This project has also worked with GNU coreutils maintainers to add more tests over time.”
“what's missing is how they will ensure both compatibility and security / edge case handling”
“Canonical wanted (still wants?) to use a coreutils implementation where "rm ./" would print "invalid input" while silently deleting the directory anyway”
“every such block can reduce the safety provided by a Rust rewrite”
“A rewrite necessarily has orders of magnitude more bugs and vulnerabilities than a decades-old well-maintained codebase”
“What's the point of a "rewrite in Rust" when it introduces bugs that either never existed in the original or were fixed already?”
“the people writing these tools are not good software developers, certainly not sufficiently good for this line of work”
“I switched to uutils-coreutils even though I knew that uutils-coreutils has some discrepancies/issues”
“uutils is way more compatible with the GNU tools than Apple's tools are”
“To me it seems inarguable that eventually uutils will have fewer bugs than coreutils”
“a local vulnerability (a race condition) in the uutils coreutils”
“uutils (Which is MIT licensed and has the stated goal to replace all GNU userspace )”
“Experimenting with better error messages, as test-bed for extensions”
“I think it's worthwhile to RiiR in general but I'll be waiting a few more years for things to mature.”
“fixing all the compatibility issues that you seem to care a great deal about”
“most shell scripts people actually write probably already work on top of this port”
“I'm glad rust coreutils is slowly working through these compatibility issues so we don't have to pay for memory safety”
“I really don't understand the hate, it's not 1.0 and majority of unsupported cases probably haven't seen use since 1990's”
“ships with 88 documented bugs, in addition to the usual unknown ones”
“the coreutils rewrite is going well all things considered, bugs are fixed quickly”
“The new programs do not reach feature-parity, added regressions, and in some cases also had security vulnerabilities.”
“these bugs were caught before being added to a stable release, so overall fine.”
“there's now an MIT-licensed Rust rewrite of GNU coretools”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.