ibraheemdev/modern-unix is a link directory, not a toolset

The repository is one README file and nothing else

The entire tracked content is a single README.md on the master branch, and the file is HTML markup wrapped around a vertical list of project names, one line pitches, and outbound links. There is no source directory, no build script, no install script, no package manifest, no CI configuration, and no LICENSE file, so the licence carried by anything behind those links is not stated here either. The file offers no installation command for anything, and the repository publishes no GitHub releases, which means there is no tag to pin a checkout to. What you can do with this repository is read it. What you cannot do is run it. Cloning it gets you a file you read once, decide something about, and then leave behind, because the value sits in the two dozen upstream projects it names rather than in anything stored here. Read it as a bookmark list with formatting, not as a distribution channel.

Several entries compete for the same slot and the file never picks

The list fills single jobs more than once, and it hands you every candidate without telling you which to take. File listing is covered twice: eza is described as a modern, maintained replacement for ls built on exa, while lsd claims to be the next gen file listing command and backwards compatible with ls. Disk usage is covered twice, by dust as a more intuitive version of du written in rust and by duf as a better df alternative. System monitoring is covered three times over, by bottom, by glances, and by gtop, and history selection is covered by both mcfly and the general purpose fuzzy finder fzf. Directory navigation adds another layer, since fd, lsd, and broot all walk trees. The file gives you no ordering, no criteria, and no note on which member of a pair is meant to win. You end up choosing from vendor pitch lines alone.

Every pitch line belongs to the tool, not to the curator

Each entry carries the upstream project's own sentence, copied across verbatim, so the list inherits every claim and none of the evidence. ripgrep is called an extremely fast alternative to grep that respects your gitignore, fd is called a simple, fast and user friendly alternative to find, and lsd is called the next gen file listing command. There is not one benchmark number, timing, test machine, or head to head comparison anywhere in the file, and no record of what was run on what. The consequence lands on whoever reads it. If you decide from these lines alone, you are deciding on marketing copy, and the words fast and maintained in the eza entry are assertions with nothing behind them inside this repository. The only claim you can check here is the one worked example, because you can paste that command and watch what it does.

Not one install command appears anywhere in the file

Nothing here tells you how to get any of these tools onto your machine. There is no package manager named, no brew line, no apt line, no cargo add, no curl to a release tarball, and no statement of which platforms each entry supports. To act on a row you have to leave, open that tool's own repository, and work out its own install path, which means the real cost of this list scales with how many entries you intend to adopt. It also means the list cannot express a version constraint. The file pins no tag, no commit, and no release date for a single entry, so a tool whose install path, binary name, or platform set has changed since 2024-09-10 is described here exactly as it was on the day of the last commit. That missing layer is the difference between this repository and a package bundle, and the work lands on you.

The only runnable snippet is an sd substitution that turns on its flag

One command example appears in the whole file, and it belongs to sd, the intuitive find and replace CLI offered as a sed alternative. It strips a run of brackets from one string and trailing whitespace from another:

echo 'lots((([]))) of special chars' | sd -F '((([])))' ''
echo 'lorem ipsum 23   ' | sd '\s+$' ''

The first line passes -F, and the output shown alongside it, the string with the brackets gone, is what you get only when that bracketed run is treated as plain text rather than as a regex pattern. The second line leaves -F out and leans on the anchor \s+$ instead to remove the padding. Two lines are the entire executable content of this repository, and they cover one tool out of two dozen. If you copy the first one without -F, the parenthesised pattern stops matching literally, and nothing in the file warns you about that.

The last push is dated 2024-09-10 and the entries pin no version

The repository is not archived, but the last push to master is dated 2024-09-10 and there are no GitHub releases behind it. So the file you read is a snapshot whose links have been sitting unchanged for roughly two years while the projects behind them moved under their own maintainers. Two consequences follow. First, every entry is an unversioned pointer: nothing records which release of bat, eza, or fd was in mind, so you cannot reproduce the state the curator was looking at, and you cannot tell whether a given link has rotted. Second, the targets are not all stable paths. The jq entry points at github.com/stedolan/jq, a personal account path rather than an organisation one, and the eza entry links the eza-community organisation while describing itself as built on exa, so the name a row talks about and the project it links to are not always the same thing. A dead link here fails silently.

Only lsd claims the flags behave the way ls does

Of everything named here, exactly one entry makes a compatibility promise: lsd, described as the next gen file listing command, backwards compatible with ls. Nothing else claims that its flags, its exit codes, or its output parse the way the command it replaces does. That gap matters most for the entries whose whole pitch is taking over a command you already type. bat is a cat clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration, and once the clone holds the name on your path, paging, piping into another program, or a script that depends on line numbering can all behave differently. procs is a modern replacement for ps written in Rust, delta is a viewer for git and diff output, and httpie is a modern, user friendly command line HTTP client for the API era, yet none arrives with a flag mapping. Adopting a clone on the strength of one line of copy means re-learning the tool from its own documentation, one tool at a time, after you install it.

Editorial conclusion

Use it as an index when you are replacing one command at a time on purpose, and confirm install steps, licence and current release in the upstream project before you commit. Ignore it if you want one settled pick per slot, a version you can pin, or evidence behind the speed claims, because the file supplies none of those and its last push is dated 2024-09-10.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository