Is this a drop-in replacement for ls ?

No — exa has, in my opinion, much saner defaults than ls , so while the available command-line options are similar, they are not exactly the same. Most of the common options will work consistently, though. For example, exa prints human-readable file sizes by default, so the -h option no longer applies.

Why would I want Git in my file listing anyway?

Because you get to see the Git information alongside everything else. Yes, it’s already trivial to just run git status when you’re in your shell. But when you need to double-check exactly which files have been staged, you really need to see it clearly!

Windows support?

Soon™.

What licence does exa use?

It uses the MIT licence. The code is open-source — development happens over on GitHub, and contributions are gratefully accepted!