It recommends d-bus, and recommends are installed by default. See https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html .
systemd works fine without dbus, just some things (logind, nspawn, calling CLI tools as non-root) won't work. But this does make sense on small installations, chroots, etc. So IMO this works as designed. ** Changed in: systemd (Ubuntu) Status: New => Won't Fix -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to systemd in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1480451 Title: systemd does not depend on dbus Status in systemd package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: systemd has no dependency to dbus. I disagree it should only be recommended. I.e. running ubuntu in systemd-nspawn. machinectl poweroff/login ... systemctl -M are not going to work. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1480451/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp