[Etzos]

The title is slightly misleading since it is specifically the optional (but installed by default on Ubuntu) systemd-resolved package (an ancillary package under the systemd name), not systemd the init system as I think many people will assume.

Edit: It seems Ubuntu builds it together with systemd so users have no choice. There may be a good technical reason for this, but I'm not sure what it is because it seems very user-hostile to remove choice like this.

Edit2: Upon further inspection this appears to be common practice, you just don't enable the parts you don't want. It would be nice if they could be put into separate packages or something of that nature though.

[pietroalbini]

I don't exactly know why it's in the same package as systemd, but why do you consider it an user-hostile decision?

Unless you have so little storage you can't afford to have an extra binary installed in the system, there is no downside of having it on the machine.

You can still disable the daemon and switch to another one (like dnsmasq), as if it was in a different package.

[Shish2k]

Technically it's not a huge problem; politically, bundling unrelated software together means that the bundled software has an advantage and a tendency to get more market share than its competitors who compete fairly. In the case of open source distros, I'm sure that this isn't illegal, but it seems like it isn't in the interests of the community.

[pietroalbini]

Well, it's clear it doesn't compete fairly with the other daemons, because it's the default one since Ubuntu 16.10 [1]. So, bundling it with the systemd package doesn't harm anybody, because you'd have to install another package anyway to change the default.

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-May/0393...

[Asooka]

cough Windows cough Internet Explorer cough

[Etzos]

It's not as user-hostile as I originally assumed (I thought it was built and enabled with no option to turn it off). As long as it can be completely disabled so that nothing will ever touch it, then it's fine. And that does indeed appear to be the case here.

Regardless, I'm sure there are some people who would love to claim a few KiB back without having to compile things for themselves.

[davrosthedalek]

Maybe not in this case, but this is not generally true. A installed executable could increase the attack surface, for example if it has setuid set and a exploitable bug is found.

[JdeBP]

Very common practice.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13477236