Canonical engineers have finished migrating Ubuntu’s core utilities to Rust, beginning in 2025. The move, completed with Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray,’ aims to improve security by leveraging Rust’s ability to catch memory bugs during compilation, unlike C compilers.
The transition saw commands like `cp`, `mv`, and `rm` initially held back in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS due to time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) security issues. These issues were addressed upstream in the uutils versions, allowing Canonical to finalize the migration with the release of Ubuntu 26.10. The ‘Stonking Stingray’ release includes a full set of Rust core utilities, encompassing common command-line tools such as `ls`, `cat`, `chmod`, and `du`.
Canonical commissioned a security audit of uutils before the 26.04 release, identifying the problems that delayed the three commands. The company is also a gold sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, contributing €40,000 annually to support its work on Rust software. The foundation is currently rewriting the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in Rust, with Ubuntu planning to adopt it as the default time synchronization client by 27.10.
The Rust-based uutils is designed for drop-in compatibility with GNU versions, treating any deviations as bugs. This ensures no functional changes for end users; the primary goal is enhanced security. Ubuntu 25.10 was the first release to ship with Rust-based utilities and made Rust-based sudo the default. The beta version of Ubuntu 26.10 is scheduled for release later this month, with the stable version arriving on October 15, 2026.
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