On using uutils

Beginning with commit 879f3af in January 2025, I have been using uutils on my NixOS machines.

Uutils is a Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils and the experience has been nothing but wonderful. I’ve encountered zero bugs, and everything is snappy.1

How to enable it?

For NixOS, the process is quite easy. You can simply add the non-prefixed versions to your system’s packages. These binaries are then used in place of the GNU coreutils:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    uutils-coreutils-noprefix
    uutils-diffutils
    uutils-findutils
];

Other Linux distributions should consider trying oxidizr.

  1. Generally, you won’t notice a speed difference as most disk I/O is sequential. ↩︎

Quote of the Day

Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program’s a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it’s just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it because the job it was written to do isn’t exactly what you want. It did a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And after you’ve changed it, that’s likely to be useful for other people. Maybe they have a job to do that’s like the job you do. So they ask, Hey, can I have a copy? Of course, if you’re a nice person, you’re going to give a copy. That’s the way to be a decent person.

— Richard Stallman

2025-03-21