Back in March Canonical announced switching to ntpd-rs was its next target as part of transitioning more Ubuntu Linux system components to Rust-based implementations. This time synchronization package is available for testing in the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release while it aims to be the default for Ubuntu 27.04.

The ntpd-rs project is a Rust-based, full-featured Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Network Time Security (NTS) implementation for both client and server functionality. The ntpd-rs is one of the Trifecta Tech Foundation projects focused on using Rust for increased security and stability.

In an Ubuntu blog post today summarizing some of the Ubuntu 26.10 release highlights, they noted its testing availability in Ubuntu 26.10 of ntpd-rs and reaffirmed their plans for using it by default in Ubuntu 27.04:

"Accurate time underpins TLS certificate validation, Kerberos, reliable log timestamps, and audit trails. If a system clock is significantly wrong, valid certificates can appear expired or not yet valid, Kerberos authentication can fail because of clock skew, and security logs can become difficult to correlate reliably across systems. Ubuntu 26.10 includes an updated version of ntpd-rs, a memory-safe NTP implementation, in the archive for testing, and the goal is to make it the default in Ubuntu 27.04."

The Ubuntu blog post also highlights Ubuntu 26.10's smaller Secure Boot path, Linux 7.3 usage, TPM-based encryption on more systems, Rust Coreutils is fully transitioned, OpenSSL 4.0, and Dbus-Broker replacing the classic Dbus daemon. Ubuntu 26.10 also achieved its goal of shipping Myna as a desktop speech-to-text feature using local AI.