lmemsm

Lightweight Command Line Utility Program Alternatives

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 14:16:57 GMT

I've been investigating some of the lightweight, command line utilities that are often used to check the status on a system. In some cases, it was hard to track down the packages they were in. It's difficult to search when some of the names are so ubiquitous. Just try running a search for the free utility.

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my core utilities

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 18:04:13 GMT

I've listed some core utilities options besides GNU. I thought I'd share something about what utilities I personally prefer to use. My main requirement in a good set of core utilities is portability. This is rather hard to find. You would think that if a utility was efficient and lightweight, it would be easy to port. However, that's not necessarily so. Many utilities that are designed for efficiency take advantage of features of a particular operating system which makes them harder to port.

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core utilities

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 18:02:38 GMT

Most systems (other than BSD based ones) use GNU's core utilities. It's used by most Linux distributions. Cygwin, MinGW and gnuwin32 run ported versions of the GNU applications as well. Even Microsoft's SFU/SUA included some of the GNU utilities. However, the GNU core utilities are typically more bloated and have more feature creep than other versions of standard Unix utility programs. BSD systems have their versions of core utilities. The latest version of Minix has adopted the BSD utilities. They tend to be less bloated than the GNU versions, but are still more bloated than other options out there. The BSD utilities also tend toward adding new features similar to but not to the same extent as the GNU utilities. Also, some of their utilities aren't as well optimized as the GNU versions. Busybox seems like the most viable option for a lightweight but still comprehensive version of core utilities. I'm currently using it on my Debian system instead of the GNU core utilities. Toybox is a similar alternative to Busybox. It has a better license option than Busybox, but it's lacking some features and tools that Busybox has.

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