{"slug": "busybox", "name": "BusyBox", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.93, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2025-11-24", "latest": "2026-10-12", "why": "With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue", "icon": true, "domain": "bootlin.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://busybox.net", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BusyBox", "busybox"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800957984, "item_id": 50059874, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059874", "by": "ramses0", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My favorite trivia is that busybox has built-in cgi-bin support", "excerpt": "My favorite trivia is that busybox has built-in cgi-bin support (and `rclone serve webdav` seems remiss to not mention as well). `https://elixir.bootlin.com/busybox/1.37.0/source/networking/httpd.c#L2401` Everything the post mentions is 100% true and well-reasoned, especially with the inclusion of pledge/chroot/etc. for dropping privileges. There's two diametrically opposed deployment mechanisms: 1) stack towers of g", "context": "", "use_case": "CGI web serving", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 800592854, "item_id": 50037053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50037053", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fortunately busybox does not use it", "excerpt": "https://shrub.industries/words/software.html \"i do not use software that does not support musl\" I have a minimal glibc chroot for certain large programs that still won't compile with musl that I want to play around with But I don't rely on any of those programs Otherwise the entire userland is statically-linked \"i do not use software that refuses to statically link\" Ibid \"i do not use GNU software\" Ibid \"i refuse to ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Problem of System Communication"}, {"id": 789736496, "item_id": 49358531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358531", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue", "excerpt": "Can you really mix it? When I break or remove a shared lib, some binaries no longer work. With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue, so I disagree on the claim that mixing solves everything as such. I keep the basic toolchain I use as statically compiled variant. The whole system works better if I can break it less easily.", "context": "", "use_case": "statically compiled basic toolchain", "switched_from": "", "story": "Solo \u2013 a .so loader for static Linux binaries"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["cgi web serving", "statically compiled basic toolchain", "fetching article text without css", "fetching pages without javascript", "fetching archived article"], "compared": [{"slug": "firefox", "name": "Firefox", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "musl", "name": "musl", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50058528", "title": "A Modern Web App in C", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995626", "title": "The Problem of System Communication", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354613", "title": "Solo \u2013 a .so loader for static Linux binaries", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946303", "title": "Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922969", "title": "The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030799", "title": "What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800957984, "item_id": 50059874, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059874", "by": "ramses0", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My favorite trivia is that busybox has built-in cgi-bin support", "excerpt": "My favorite trivia is that busybox has built-in cgi-bin support (and `rclone serve webdav` seems remiss to not mention as well). `https://elixir.bootlin.com/busybox/1.37.0/source/networking/httpd.c#L2401` Everything the post mentions is 100% true and well-reasoned, especially with the inclusion of pledge/chroot/etc. for dropping privileges. There's two diametrically opposed deployment mechanisms: 1) stack towers of g", "context": "", "use_case": "CGI web serving", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 800592854, "item_id": 50037053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50037053", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Fortunately busybox does not use it", "excerpt": "https://shrub.industries/words/software.html \"i do not use software that does not support musl\" I have a minimal glibc chroot for certain large programs that still won't compile with musl that I want to play around with But I don't rely on any of those programs Otherwise the entire userland is statically-linked \"i do not use software that refuses to statically link\" Ibid \"i do not use GNU software\" Ibid \"i refuse to ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Problem of System Communication"}, {"id": 789736496, "item_id": 49358531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358531", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue", "excerpt": "Can you really mix it? When I break or remove a shared lib, some binaries no longer work. With static libs or even better, e. g. statically compiled busybox, I don't have that issue, so I disagree on the claim that mixing solves everything as such. I keep the basic toolchain I use as statically compiled variant. The whole system works better if I can break it less easily.", "context": "", "use_case": "statically compiled basic toolchain", "switched_from": "", "story": "Solo \u2013 a .so loader for static Linux binaries"}, {"id": 783220240, "item_id": 48951265, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48951265", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-07-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "busybox wget -O- http://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA2880s6", "excerpt": "Alternative to archive.ph No CSS, text-only (Seeking Alpha) busybox wget -O- http://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA2880s6 \\ |sed ' s/.*\\\"body\\\":\\\"/<meta charset=utf-8>/; s/\\\",\\\"readTime.*//; s/?utm_source.\\{53\\}//g; s/&source=more_on//g; ' \\ |tr -d '\\134' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm", "context": "", "use_case": "fetching article text without CSS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters"}, {"id": 750843872, "item_id": 46927742, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46927742", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "busybox ssl_client -n $x $x > 1.htm", "excerpt": "Alternative to archive.ph, no Javascript, no CAPTCHAs: x=www.washingtonpost.com { printf 'GET /technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/ HTTP/1.1\\r\\n' printf 'Host: '$x'\\r\\n' printf 'User-Agent: Chrome/115.0.5790.171 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible ; Googlebot/2.1 ; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)\\r\\n' printf 'X-Forwarded-For: 66.249.66.1\\r\\n\\r\\n' }|busybox ssl_client -n $x $x > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm", "context": "", "use_case": "fetching pages without JavaScript", "switched_from": "", "story": "The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else"}, {"id": 736684544, "item_id": 46042784, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042784", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "busybox wget -U googlebot -O 1.htm", "excerpt": "Alternative to archive.is busybox wget -U googlebot -O 1.htm https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/technology/openai-chatgpt-users-risks.html firefox ./1.htm", "context": "", "use_case": "fetching archived article", "switched_from": "", "story": "What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality"}]}