Canonical with Jon Seager

About this episode

Jon Seager discusses the challenges and decisions behind rewriting foundational components of Ubuntu in Rust.

What does it take to rewrite the foundational components of one of the world's most popular Linux distributions? Ubuntu serves over 12 million daily desktop users alone, and the systems that power it, from sudo to core utilities, have been running for decades with what Jon Seager, VP of Engineering for Ubuntu at Canonical, calls "shaky underpinnings." In this episode, we talk to Jon about the bold decision to "oxidize" Ubuntu's foundation. We explore why they're rewriting critical components like sudo in Rust, how they're managing the immense risk of changing software that millions depend on daily, and what it means to modernize a 20-year-old operating system without breaking the internet.

People in this episode

Host: Matthias Endler

Guest: Jon Seager

Topics covered

• Ubuntu
• Rust
• Linux distributions
• software modernization
• engineering challenges

Keywords

• Ubuntu
• Rust
• Linux
• software engineering
• sudo
• modernization
• Canonical

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Canonical, Ubuntu, Linux

Products: sudo

More episodes of Rust in Production

• Veo with Anders Hellerup Madsen and Gorm Casper · June 4, 2026 · 1h 12m
• Rust for Linux with Alice Ryhl and Greg Kroah-Hartman · May 21, 2026 · 50 min
• NLnet Labs with Arya Khanna and Martin Hoffmann · May 7, 2026 · 1h 21m
• Helsing with Jon Gjengset · April 23, 2026 · 1h 33m
• Cloudsmith with Cian Butler · April 9, 2026 · 1h 15m
• Gama Space with Sebastian Scholz · January 22, 2026 · 58 min