In the daily updated experimental builds of Ubuntu, reflecting the development of the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 release, the project sudo-rs, written in Rust, has been implemented as the default utility instead of sudo. The decision to use sudo-rs in Ubuntu was made in May, but until recently it was unclear whether developers would manage to implement the necessary missing features in sudo-rs before Ubuntu 25.10 enters the freeze phase.
To supply sudo-rs in Ubuntu 25.10, requirements such as compatibility with older Linux kernel versions (<5.9), support for the NOEXEC protection mechanism and AppArmor profiles, stability fixes, package review, and addition to the main repository were fulfilled. To revert to the classic sudo in Ubuntu installations with sudo-rs, the command 'update-alternatives --set sudo /usr/bin/sudo.ws' can be used. In Ubuntu 26.10, only the sudo-rs package is planned to remain in the main repository. As for the su utility, the usual utility /usr/bin/su continues to be used in Ubuntu, but developers intend to start experiments with using a Rust-based version of su (su-rs) in the future.
The replacement of system components is part of an initiative to improve the quality of the system environment by providing software initially developed with a focus on security, reliability, and correctness. The delivery of utilities written in Rust will help reduce the risk of memory-related errors, such as accessing memory after it has been freed and buffer overflows. If no unforeseen issues arise, Rust utilities will be used by default in the LTS branch of Ubuntu 26.04.
Source: opennet.ru
