Comment 15 for bug 1133777

Hi,

The decision was taken to remove DNS fallback from Mint.

- OpenDNS was identified as not being the right choice for DNS Fallback (mostly due to the way they handle errors).
- It was demonstrated that resolvconf's tail technique was not adequate technically to implement the concept of DNS Fallback.
- The need for DNS Fallback was questioned and although it did fix an issue from upstream Ubuntu at the time, it's arguable whether we do still need it nowadays.
- Privacy concerns are peripheral to this. Everything we do is to improve Mint, including adding DNS Fallback at the time, and removing it right now. ISPs know much more than OpenDNS since they don't just know what you're visiting but also your real name, your address, your phone number, your credit card details and so on. Again, I've no interest in getting into the privacy argument. I'm very well aware of the problems with PRISM and all at the moment and I understand why people are so concerned over this. The best I can say is that we're trying our best out here to make a great OS, and that means something that works great for you, not against you.

DNS Fallback isn't the first time Mint ventures outside the boundaries of what other distros do and solve something on its own. We were proud of it, I'm still proud of the way we tried and took the initiative, but I'm happy we identified the drawbacks here as well and so it's time to remove it.

Mint 16 will be the first release to come with no DNS Fallback. In prior release you can remove it with the command:

sudo rm /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail

I'd like to thank everyone here and on Launchpad for the feedback they gave us.