14 DAY TRIAL // As you might know by now, Ubuntu 16.10 is currently in heavy development these days, and it is getting all sorts of new GNU/Linux technologies and improvements.
One of the latest technologies implemented in Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) is a new, universal local DNS resolver service for all Ubuntu Linux flavors, including Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Touch.
Canonical's Martin Pitt has made the big announcement on one of Ubuntu's mailing lists, informing the community and Ubuntu developers that he pushed a new local DNS resolver service to the upcoming operating system, replacing the old one.
The good news is that the new local DNS resolver is universal, based on systemd-resolved, which means that not only is it small and lightweight, but it is already available as part of the systemd init system.
Additionally, systemd-resolved supports all the latest networking technologies, such as DNSSEC, enabled by default in systemd 230 and later, doesn't rely on D-Bus as the previous dnsmasq-based solution did on Ubuntu desktops and mobile.
"This had the major drawback that if the first DNS server does not respond (or is slow), then *every* DNS lookup suffers from a ~ 10s timeout, which makes every network operation awfully slow," explains Martin Pitt in the announcement, referring to the old methods.
systemd 230 now available in Ubuntu 16.10
We are currently monitoring the development cycle of Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak), which we have installed in a VirtualBox-based virtual machine, so today's updates have brought systemd 230, which includes the latest systemd-resolved component.
It also looks like Martin Pitt tested the new local DNS resolver implementation on his laptop for the past three weeks or so, and he's happy to report that no problems have occurred since then.
However, this does not mean that there won't be problems with the new local DNS resolver functionality under certain circumstances, so if you have Ubuntu 16.10 installed and you've encountered an issue, please do report it immediately.