With the Rust 1.90 release due out in mid-September, the Rust compiler on Linux x86_64 will begun using the LLD linker by default in order to "significantly reduce" linking times.

Linking time can contribute significantly to the overall compilation/build time. In tests carried out by Rust developers, the linker performance can improve by as much as 7x and in the case of ripgrep yielded a 40% reduction in the end-to-end compilation time. Or for a debug build, around a 20% improvement. It's quite a difference being talked up by the Rust team:

There should be faster build times for most Rust programs and the hope is there will be no issues coming up in practice. Should anything bad turn up, LLD can still be disabled to fallback to the default system linker like GNU ld. Those wanting to test out the new Linux x86_64 default right now can do so using the current Rust 1.90 beta releases. Rust 1.90 stable is expected on 18 September.

More details on this important Rust 1.90 improvement for Linux x86_64 use can find all the details on the [1]Rust-Lang.org blog . Meanwhile Rust's WASM And AArch64 targets already are using LLD by default.



[1] https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/01/rust-lld-on-1.90.0-stable/