The 'oxidisation' continues

Ubuntu 26.10 ships with Rust-based OpenPGP tooling

Ubuntu 26.10 ships with a Rust-based OpenPGP implementation ahead of plans to phase out GnuPG in a future release.

Sequoia PGP is included in the default seed (i.e., preinstalled) for the ‘Stonking Stingray’, and Canonical has moved the rust-sequoia-sq package to the main repo in order to provide official support for it.

But it won’t be the distribution’s default OpenPGP toolchain – not yet. Sequoia PGP (sq) is included out-of-the-box alongside the standard GNU version.

Canonical does to make it the default in the near future, ‘phasing out’ the C-based Gnu version.

For now,  gpg still invokes GnuPG, but sq (or an app configured to use Sequoia’s libraries) calls on Sequoia. The new version can be run e.g., sq sign or sq verify from the command line to try it.

Canonical say adopting Sequoia will allow Ubuntu to offer OpenPGP interoperability whilst benefiting from the “more maintainable and memory-safe foundation” the Rust version provides.

Other Ubuntu Rust changes

It’s not the only Rust-related change in the new Ubuntu release, either. Ubuntu 26.10 ships a full set of Rust-based core utilities out-of-the-box, completing work that began in 25.10. GNU-versions of cp, mv, and rm are now provided by uutils.

Canonical’s engineers plan to ‘oxidise’ more foundational packages in future releases. A Rust rewrite of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) being eyed for inclusion as the default time sync client in Ubuntu 27.04.

The company is also a gold sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, paying €40,000 a year to help fund work on Rust software.