The GNU project has released Coreutils 9.10, a stable update to its essential suite of file, shell, and text manipulation tools for Linux and Unix-like systems. This version addresses regressions from 9.9 and introduces enhancements for better performance and compatibility. Published on February 4, 2026, the release focuses on reliability across various utilities.
The GNU Coreutils collection underpins nearly every Linux and Unix-like operating system, providing fundamental commands for everyday tasks. Version 9.10, announced by the GNU project, tackles several issues from the previous 9.9 release, particularly regressions in commands like cp, install, and mv. These affected copying sparse files using SEEK_HOLE on filesystems such as ext4, especially when files were being updated and copy offload was not available.
Signal handling sees significant improvements in this update. The timeout command now properly propagates all terminating signals to the monitored process, ensuring the child process does not continue running after the parent exits. Ignored signals are respected more accurately, which benefits backgrounded shell jobs. Additionally, tail -f --pid avoids unexpected exits on non-terminating signals.
Other utilities receive correctness fixes as well. The date command handles format directives that produce empty output without failing. The dd command prevents overwriting existing files if truncation fails. Long-standing portability problems in du and ls have been resolved, so they no longer alter strings returned by getenv. Tools like fmt, numfmt, md5sum, and the sha*sum family benefit from better error handling, suffix parsing, and line-ending translation.
Beyond fixes, Coreutils 9.10 adds functional enhancements. The paste command now supports multi-byte characters fully, including multi-byte delimiters. Du gains a -A short option for --apparent-size, aiding compatibility with FreeBSD. Stat and tail recognize the guest-memfd filesystem type, while tail introduces a --debug option to explain its follow mode implementation.
Usability improvements include bold rendering of option names in --help output and man pages, with hyperlinks to online documentation. These changes enhance stability and portability, making the tools more robust for system administrators and developers. For full details, the official announcement provides a technical overview.
