Linux – Any options to replace GNU coreutils on Linux

command linecoreutilsgnulinuxnon-gnu

I've been thinking about discontinuing the use of GNU Coreutils on my Linux systems, but to be honest, unlike many other GNU components, I can't think of any alternatives (on Linux). What alternatives are there to GNU coreutils? will I need more than one package? Links to the project are a must, bonus points for naming distro packages.

Also please don't suggest things unless you know they work on Linux, and can reference instructions. I doubt I'll be switching kernels soon, and I'm much too lazy for anything much beyond a straightforward ./configure; make; make install. I'm certainly not going to hack C for it.

warning: if your distro uses coreutils removing them could break the way your distro functions. However not having them be first in your $PATH shouldn't break things, as most scripts should use absolute paths.

Best Answer

busybox the favorite of Embedded Linux systems.

BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.
BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded systems. To create a working system, just add some device nodes in /dev, a few configuration files in /etc, and a Linux kernel.

You can pretty much make any coreutil name a link to the busybox binary and it will work. you can also run busybox <command> and it will work. Example: if you're on Gentoo and haven't installed your vi yet, you can run busybox vi filename and you'll be in vi. It's

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