GNU Coreutils 9.8 Is Here — SHA3, Base58, and Smarter Tools

If you work with Linux command-line tools daily, you’ve probably used ls, cp, sort, or tail — all of which come from GNU Coreutils, the essential toolkit that powers almost every Unix-like system.

Now, Coreutils has just released version 9.8, and it’s a pretty exciting update.

This release isn’t just bug fixes — it brings new cryptographic support, better internationalization, and smarter handling of system resources. 

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🚀 Headline Features in 9.8

This version added some genuinely useful capabilities:

• SHA3 Support with cksum
  

  You can now hash files with modern SHA3 algorithms using:

  
  

  cksum -a sha3 -l 256 file.txt
  
  

  
  

  This is a nice security upgrade for anyone who verifies data integrity.

• Base58 Encoding in basenc
  

  Base58 (popular in crypto and blockchain worlds) is now natively supported:

  
  

  basenc --base58 file.txt
  
  

  
  
• nproc Respects cgroup v2 CPU Quotas
  

  On containerized systems, nproc now accurately reports available CPUs according to cgroup v2 limits — a small change, but very helpful for container orchestration tools.

• fold Gets Unicode-Aware
  

  The fold command is now multi-byte character aware, meaning it wraps text correctly even with complex Unicode characters — perfect for internationalized logs or multilingual data.

• Custom Baud Rates with stty
  

  If you work with serial communication, you can now set arbitrary baud rates on supported systems.

  See also: Mastering the Linux Command Line — Your Complete Free Training Guide

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🛠 Tons of Bug Fixes

The team closed dozens of long-standing bugs, some of them dating back years. A few highlights:

• cp --sparse=always now correctly creates holes in files (more efficient disk usage).
• tail no longer outputs more than requested when reading from growing files.
• od, ls, and install had subtle alignment and error message issues fixed.
• stdbuf finally works on AIX systems.

These fixes mean more predictable behavior across different filesystems and platforms.

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📏 Better Standards Compliance

Coreutils 9.8 also makes some changes to align with POSIX.1-2024:

• readlink becomes verbose when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
• realpath gets a new E option.
• tsort now ignores w, in line with the standard.

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⚡ Performance & Accuracy Improvements

This release also focused on performance tuning:

• factor is now much faster when working with very large numbers.
• seq now outputs more accurate results for huge integer ranges.
• fold exits immediately on write errors — useful for big data pipelines.

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🧰 Why This Matters

Coreutils is the foundation of almost every Linux distribution. Improvements here ripple out across servers, containers, CI/CD systems, and developer workflows.

If you rely on hashing for file verification, work with containerized environments, or handle non-English text, this release is particularly impactful.

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📦 Get It

You can grab the new release from GNU mirrors:

🔗 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/

And as always, verify the download with:

gpg --verify coreutils-9.8.tar.gz.sig

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👏 The People Behind It

This release had 348 commits from 8 contributors over 24 weeks — with major work from Paul Eggert, Padraig Brady, and Collin Funk.

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Bottom line: GNU Coreutils 9.8 is not just a routine update — it’s a significant step forward for security (SHA3), usability (Unicode-aware fold), and accuracy (nproc with cgroups). If you maintain systems, containers, or scripts, it’s worth updating and taking advantage of these improvements.