Base system
There is no official "base system" of the GNU operating system. GNU was designed to be a replacement for Unix operating systems of the 1980s and used the POSIX standards as a guide, but either definition would give a much larger "base system". The following list is instead a small set of GNU packages which seem closer to being "core" packages than being in any of the further down sections. Inclusions (such as plotutils) and exclusions (such as the C standard library) are of course debatable.
| Name | Description | Provides | Latest release[Note 1] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version | Date | |||
| bash | GNU's UNIX compatible shell | bash | 5.2.21[3] 
|
2023-11-09 |
| coreutils | base commands | 9.5[4]
|
2024-03-28 | |
| cpio | archiving program | cpio | 2.15[5]
|
2024-01-14 |
| diffutils | contains utilities to compare files | diff, cmp, diff3, sdiff | 3.10[6]
|
2023-05-21 |
| findutils | contains search utilities | find, locate, updatedb, xargs[7] | 4.9.0[8]
|
2022-02-02 |
| finger | user information | — | 1.37 | 1992-10-28 |
| grep | search for strings in files | grep | 3.11[9]
|
2023-05-13 |
| groff | document processing system (groff) | groff | 1.23.0[10]
|
2023-07-07 |
| GRUB | GRand Unified Bootloader | grub | 2.12[11]
|
2023-12-20 |
| gzip | compression program (gzip) | gzip | 1.13[12]
|
2023-08-19 |
| hurd[Note 2] | microkernel-based set of servers that perform the same function as a UNIX kernel | — | 0.9[13]
|
2016-12-18 |
| inetutils | useful utils for networking | ftp, telnet, rsh, rlogin, tftp | 2.5[14]
|
2023-12-29 |
| linux-libre | kernel that is maintained from modified versions of Linux to remove any software that does not include its source code, has its source code obfuscated, or is released under proprietary licenses | — | 6.8.5-gnu[15]
|
2024-04-10 |
| plotutils | useful utils for plotting to different devices | graph, libplot, libplotter | 2.6
|
2009-09-27 |
| readline | useful library for reading command lines | readline | 8.2[16]
|
2022-09-26 |
| screen | a terminal multiplexer | screen | 4.9.1[17]
|
2023-08-17 |
| sysutils[Note 3] | system utilities to manage users, groups, passwords, shells | add-shell, chage, chfn, chgroup, chgrpmem, chpasswd, chsh, chuser, cppw, expiry, gpasswd, grpck, gshadow, hwclock, isosize, last, lastlog, login, lsage, lsgroup, lsuser, mkgroup, mkuser, nologin, passwd, pwck, remove-shell, rmgroup, rmuser, setpwnam, vipw, wall, write | 0.1.6[18] | 2009 |
| tar | archiver able to create and handle file archives in various formats | tar | 1.35[19]
|
2023-07-18 |
| texinfo | documentation system for producing online and printed manuals | — | 7.1[20]
|
2023-10-18 |
| time | program to determine the duration of execution of a particular command | time | 1.9[21]
|
2018-03-12 |
Notes
- ^ Stable versions. Note that some distros (e.g., Gentoo) use some development versions in case the stable versions are a bit old.
- ^ Note that because GNU Hurd is under active development, there is no stable version. The Hurd is distributed through version control systems.
- ^ No stable version yet. Current version is alpha and is not suitable for use in production systems.
