Besides the early fallout of switching to Rust Coreutils on Ubuntu 25.10 causing some breakage, a more pressing issue has been discovered: Ubuntu 25.10’s unattended upgrades functionality for automatic security updates is currently broken due to a Rust Coreutils bug.
Earlier this month it was reported that the date -r command can report the wrong date on Ubuntu 25.10 due to a Rust Coreutils difference compared to GNU Coreutils. It was noted that this could cause issues for backup scripts and other software relying on the “date -r” output and behavior being the same as GNU Coreutils
date -r reports current date instead of date specified by reference file
Seems like it was not simply a “difference compared to GNU coreutils” — it was just giving completely the wrong date.
That’s why its in 25.10 before LTS release. To test “early” in real world environments and find these issues. But from the Rust UUtils project side, I wonder how they did not catch this, if its producing different output.
I wonder how they did not catch this
Because the date command fails most of its unit tests and they decided to ship it anyway. I would also argue they don’t have anywhere near enough tests in the first place.
At least from test coverage point of view, I think they aim to have the same tests to pass as the original tools. Not all pass right now, so incompatibility is expected at some point, somewhere.
Flatpak support broken, shovelware pile Snap Store pushed down users’ throats, and now this.
Anyone who thinks that Ubuntu is the best choice for new Linux users is fundamentally wrong.
I try not to put much stock in black-and-white opinions because I think the answer is rarely that simple.
I try not to put much stock in black-and-white opinions because I think the answer is rarely that simple.
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Either Ubuntu 25.10 launched with broken Flatpak support or not.
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Either Snap Store allows random crap or not.
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Either Ubuntu 25.10 launched with broken automatic security updates or not.
Sometimes facts are actually black-and-white and not shades of grey opinions. Also, brushing away simple truths by insisting they are extremely complex facets of a thing the common person does not need to get involved is a common disinformation tactic, used by the likes of climate change deniers etc. since decades.
Software has bugs more news at 11
