Ubuntu 26.10 finishes replacing GNU coreutils with Rust
Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils
Ubuntu 26.10 'Stonking Stingray' completes the distro's migration to Rust-based core utilities, including cp, mv, and rm, which were held back in 26.04 LTS due to TOCTOU security issues in uutils. With those flaws fixed upstream, the release ships a full set of memory-safe tools like ls, cat, chmod, and du. Canonical funds the work with €40k annually to the Trifecta Tech Foundation. The beta lands this month, stable on October 15, 2026.
Here, the completion of the coreutils migration offers no functional difference to end users. The Rust-based uutils aims for drop-in compatibility with GNU versions, and treats any deviances as a bug. That's by designed; the point is one of improved security.
- collinfunk
I really don't understand why Canonical rushes this. If 'rm' can't remove all possible directory entries, that is a big issue:
$ podman run --rm -it ubuntu:26.10
$ apt update -y; apt upgrade -y
$ rm --version
rm (uutils coreutils) 0.10.0
$ gnumkdir -p $(yes a/ | head -n $((32 * 1024)) | tr -d '\n')
$ rm -rf a
Segmentation fault (core dumped) rm -rf a
$ ls a
a
$ gnurm -rf a
$ ls a
ls: cannot access 'a': No such file or directory
- Malakun
You can use coreutils-from-gnu instead uutils. However since 26.04 build-essential depends on coreutils-from-uutils, it cannot be upgraded while coreutils-from-gnu is installed.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/build-essential/+b...
- Arcuru
Has the code quality in that repo gotten to a good point then? I haven't followed it much, but last I looked[1] (which was a few years ago) almost every tool I looked at in detail had pretty bad performance or correctness issues.
- arjie
Everything online reminds of when Ubuntu switched to dash for init scripts or something. Good times.
- SubiculumCode
So what is the way forward for Linux to have sandboxi g as strong as Android? Appimage everything? I know it's possible now hacking together things, but I mean by default and integrated.
- dsign
Hmm, this doesn’t make sense. You simply don’t replace utilities with many decades of maturity and that “just work” with something that is not as mature. It will open all users of the distro to all sorts of subtle and not so subtle bugs. I for one don’t want to find myself staring at a mysterious segfault when I want to build the latest version of nodejs or flash a microcontroller. It’s such a pity; I have used Ubuntu for close to 23 years.
- hk1337
Was there something wrong with how they are currently written or do they just want the badge that says they converted to Rust?
- asrk-qlwu
From the company that distributed Amazon spyware (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do) and now turns Debian into Slopian. No thanks.