Ubuntu 26.10 completes its transition to Rust-based coreutils

Ubuntu 26.10 completes the distro’s move to Rust-based core utilities, with the commands previously held back due to security issues now migrated to memory-safe versions.

cp, mv and rm were held back on their GNU versions in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS while TOCTOU (time-of-check to time-of-use) issues were addressed in the uutils versions. 

Wit those issues now resolved upstream, Ubuntu 26.10 has made the switch; the ‘Stonking Stingray’ ships with a full set of Rust core utilities, including ls, cat, chmod, chownand  du.

Canonical’s engineers began “oxidising” the distro – replacing foundational software with Rust alternatives – in 2025, noting the security benefits of doing so (as Rust catches memory bugs at compile time, whereas C compilers don’t).

Ubuntu 25.10 was the first release to ship with Rust-based utilities and made a Rust-based sudo the default.

Canonical is a gold sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, giving €40,000 a year to help the non-profit work on other Rust software. That includes a rewrite of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which Ubuntu wants to use as its default time sync client by 27.10.

For the completion of the coreutils migration, there will be no functional difference. The Rust-based uutils aims for drop-in compatibility with GNU versions, and treats any deviances as a bug.

Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’ beta arrives later this month, before the stable release on 15 October, 2026.