Ubuntu 25.10 on the way to Linux without GNU

With version 25.10 released on October 9, codename “Questing Quokka”, Ubuntu implements a paradigm shift that can be called groundbreaking, even though many users will not even notice it. Ubuntu is replacing the traditional GNU core utilities written in C (command line tools like ls, cat, cp, or pwd) with new implementations in the currently popular programming language Rust. Also, sudo, which is especially important and security-critical in Ubuntu and allows a normal user to elevate to gain admin rights, is now available in Rust. Ubuntu is the first major Linux distribution to take this step.

Goodbye, X.org

On the desktop, Ubuntu drops support for the X.org display server with the upgrade to Gnome 49. In the future, only the Wayland session will be available. Ubuntu’s KDE variant, Kubuntu, also foregoes Wayland but wants to allow the reinstallation of X.org for the time being. New Gnome applications include the image viewer Loupe and the terminal Ptyxis.

Ubuntu 25.10 comes with the fresh Kernel 6.17 and offers experimental support for storing cryptographic keys in computer hardware (TPM module). More details can be found in the Release Notes. There is also a “lovely” bug in this release, rendering Flatpaks uninstallable, which was fixed thanks to an update of the security software Apparmor.

Rust ports have consequences

According to statements by developers, the switch to Rust should offer increased resilience and security. Supporting this argument is the fact that Rust, unlike the “old-timer” C, includes modern memory management that prevents buffer overflows, for example. If everything goes as planned, the switch will be made permanent in April 2026 with the release of the next LTS version (LTS stands for Long Term Support). Update 24 October 2025: A bug in the Rust implementation of date which was fixed in the meantime disabled the automatic check for system software updates .

The new Rust applications are considered drop-in replacements, so they should function just like their predecessors. However, the new sudo-rs is not 100% compatible with the old sudo-ws. The same applies to the new rust-coreutils package compared to the old coreutils, which are now called gnu-coreutils. For both cases, the developers provide apt command lines to switch in a post on Ubuntu Discourse.

The Rust implementations have a disadvantage in terms of storage space in any case. They are 25 MB in size, more than three times as large as the C counterpart (7 MB), which causes problems for containerization.

Politics and licensing

For the future, Ubuntu plans to replace other GNU tools such as Findutils and Diffutils with Rust implementations as well. Ultimately, this is also a political decision: it means parting ways with the GNU tools from the Free Software Foundation, which are important enough that Ubuntu’s ancestor Debian is fully named “Debian GNU/Linux.”

There is also a licensing break with the past. While the GNU tools are under the GPL, the Rust versions are licensed under the MIT license. This causes concern among free software advocates. Although the Rust programs are also free, they can be commercially exploited at any time. This is not possible with a “copyleft” license like the GPL because it requires that such licensed software and all products derived from it must remain free.