The Rust Coreutils project, which aims to provide a full, modern Rust implementation of the GNU Core Utilities — the essential command-line tools found on every Linux and Unix-like operating system — has announced the release of version 0.4.
Notably, the project’s growing maturity has already led to real-world adoption in some Linux distros, such as Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” and AerynOS, both of which now utilize Rust Coreutils for select system utilities.
Version 0.4 brings this release a step closer to achieving full GNU Coreutils compatibility. According to devs, the latest test results show 544 passing tests, up from 532 in the previous 0.3 release — an increase that raises total compatibility to 85.8%, while failures dropped from 68 to 56.
If you’re expecting stability for any Ubuntu release, that went out the window when Canonical started forcing Snaps.
But non-LTS Ubuntu releases have always been a testing ground for less-than-stable changes. uutils is just one of them, and the only way to make them stable is to see how they’re being used in the wild.