Makes me wonder if there might ever be support for standardizing a json input/output schema for all the typical Linux userland stuff, /proc structures, and so on. Then a "jq" like utility would have more value. Having it co-exist with the current "just a bunch of text" isn't ideal though, as you'd be stuck with something clunky like adding a switch to every command. Or an environment variable that changes everything. Or a "j-" version of each.

libxo on FreeBSD tries to do this to some extent but a way to turn json back into neat tables is somehow missing (jq isn't great in that regard).