GNU Coreutils 9.0: cp Now Enables CoW By Default + Copy Offload, wc Now Uses AVX2

Coreutils 9.0 is now available and it's a significant update to this collection of common open-source utilities found on effectively all Linux systems.

First up, the widely-used cp utility for copying files/directories has some notable changes. With Coreutils 9.0, cp now enables copy-on-write (CoW) support by default using the FICLONE ioctl. Additionally, cp now uses copy-offload where possible by means of the copy_file_range system call. The cp command also now detects holes differently, among other changes. These cp changes also apply to the mv and install utilities too.

Meanwhile the wc utility will now support making use of AVX2 instructions when counting lines. This should yield a big performance speed-up -- as much as 5x faster!

Additionally, the cksum utility now supports making use of the PCLMUL instructions when specifying the CRC algorithm.

Plus there are many bug fixes and other improvements to these common utilities. More details via the release announcement.