On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 11:47:48AM -0700, David Christensen wrote: > Proving, disproving, and/or improving the hypothesis would require > researching ifconfig(8), systemd(1), and the reasons why the former was > dropped from the default installation when the latter was introduced into > Debian (Jesse?).
Your timeline is wrong. Your "hypothesis" is also wrong. The net-tools package was installed by default in jessie and earlier. It only became non-default in stretch. The iproute2 package, which supersedes net-tools, has been installed by default since squeeze. The systemd package was first available as a "technology preview" in wheezy, and became the default init system in jessie. systemd has its own way of managing network interfaces (systemd-networkd), which may be used as an alternative to /etc/network/interfaces and/or NetworkManager. However, this is not done by default in Debian. Debian still uses /etc/network/interfaces by default, plus NetworkManager if you install certain Desktop Environments. If you want to use systemd-networkd, you have to configure it yourself. systemd-networkd has absolutely nothing to do with iproute2 superseding net-tools. For more details on iproute2 superseding net-tools, see <https://lwn.net/Articles/710533/>.
