A number of notablesoftware packages were developed for, or are maintained by, theFree Software Foundation as part of theGNU Project.
Summarising the situation in 2013,Richard Stallman identified nine aspects which generally apply to being a GNU package,[1] but he noted that exceptions and flexibility are possible when there are good reasons:[2]
There is no official "base system" of theGNU operating system. GNU was designed to be a replacement forUnix operating systems of the 1980s and used thePOSIX 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 asplotutils) and exclusions (such as theC standard library) are of course debatable.
| Name | Description | Provides | Latest release[Note 1] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version | Date | |||
| bash | GNU's UNIX compatible shell | bash | 5.3[3]  | 2025-07-03 |
| coreutils | base commands | 9.9[4] | 2025-11-10 | |
| cpio | archiving program | cpio | 2.15[5] | 2024-01-14 |
| diffutils | contains utilities to compare files | diff,cmp,diff3,sdiff | 3.12[6] | 2025-04-08 |
| findutils | contains search utilities | find,locate, updatedb,xargs[7] | 4.10.0[8][9] | 2024-06-01 |
| finger | user information | — | 1.37 | 1992-10-28 |
| grep | search for strings in files | grep | 3.12[10] | 2025-04-10 |
| groff | document processing system (groff) | groff | 1.23.0[11] | 2023-07-07 |
| GRUB | GRand Unified Bootloader | grub | 2.12[12] | 2023-12-20 |
| gzip | compression program (gzip) | gzip | 1.14[13] | 2025-04-09 |
| hurd[Note 2] | microkernel-based set of servers that perform the same function as a UNIX kernel | — | ||
| inetutils | useful utils for networking | ftp,telnet,rsh,rlogin,tftp | 2.6[14] | 2025-02-21 |
| linux-libre | kernel that is maintained from modified versions ofLinux to remove any software that does not include itssource code, has its source codeobfuscated, or is released underproprietary licenses | — | 6.17.8-gnu[15] | 2025-11-14 |
| plotutils | useful utils for plotting to different devices | graph,libplot,libplotter | 2.6 | 2009-09-27 |
| readline | useful library for reading command lines | readline | 8.3[16] | 2025-07-03 |
| screen | aterminal multiplexer | screen | 5.0.1[17] | 2025-05-12 |
| 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 | — | 7.2[20] | 2024-12-28 |
| time | program to determine the duration of execution of a particular command | time | 1.9[21] | 2018-03-12 |
The software listed below is generally useful tosoftware developers and othercomputer programmers.
The followinglibraries andsoftware frameworks are often used in combination with the basic toolchain tools above to build software. (For libraries specifically designed to implement GUI desktops, seeGraphical desktop.)
The following packages provide compilers and interpreters for programming languages beyond those included in theGNU Compiler Collection.
The software listed below is generally useful to users not specifically engaged in software development.
The following packages provideGUIdesktop environments,window managers, and associated graphics libraries.
The ancestry-line of the GNU Pipo BBS reaches over YAWK ("Yet Another Wersion of Citadel") back toCitadel, although it is completely independent code-wise. In fact it was a disagreement with Kenneth Haglund, author of YAWK, because of copyright-problems that triggered the development of the GNU Pipo BBS. The original development-team were Grégory Vandenbrouck and Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni who worked on the GNU Pipo BBS with help from volunteers like Sébastien Bonnefoy.
