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 due to a crop of TOCTOU (time-of-check to time-of-use) issues that needed to be fixed in the uutils versions. 

With those issues resolved upstream, Ubuntu 26.10 finishes the job. The ‘Stonking Stingray’ ships a full set of Rust core utilities, which encompasses common command-line tools like ls, cat, chmod and  du.

Canonical donates €40k a year to help fund work on Rust software

Canonical’s engineers began “oxidising” the distro – replacing foundational software with Rust alternatives – in 2025, noting the security benefits in doing so (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 Rust-based sudo the default.

Migrating hasn’t been without hiccups, but Canonical has been studious.

It commissioned a security audit of uutils ahead of 26.04, which found the issues that kept the three commands back on their GNU versions. It’s also a gold sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, giving €40,000 a year to fund its work on Rust software.

The non-profit foundation is undertaking a Rust-based rewrite of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), and Ubuntu plans to use it as the default time sync client by 27.10.

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.

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