Ubuntu 23.10 Looks To dhcpcd5 For Replacing ISC DHCP Client

The ISC DHCP software was marked end-of-life at the end of 2022 and thus Ubuntu Linux developers have been deciding on a new isc-dhcp-client package replacement to use by default.

It looks like for Ubuntu 23.10 they will migrate from isc-dhcp-client for their network DHCP client needs to dhcpcd5. The dhcpcd5 package has already been available via the Ubuntu universe archive while now they are going through the process to get it promoted to Ubuntu main so that it could be deployed by default on Ubuntu. All of this will hopefully see that the DHCP client support is in good standing ahead of the very important Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cycle.

The MIR was filed this morning for going through the process to get dhcpcd5 into Ubuntu main for the new Ubuntu 23.10 "Mantic Minotaur" cycle. In there it's explained:

"The package dhcpcd5 is required in Ubuntu main to replace isc-dhcp-client. ISC has announced the end of life for ISC DHCP as of the end of 2022.

In FO092 specification, we compare the alternatives among dhcpcd, udhcpc, ipconfig, dhclient, systemd-networkd, network-manager, dhcpcanon. dhcpcd is small (to be included in initramfs), supports DHCPv6, can be called from shell (to be used in initramfs and cloud-init). It’s the best candidate currently.

The package dhcpcd5 is required in Ubuntu main no later than 23.10 release. So in 24.04 we can have sufficient time to replace the usage of isc-dhcp-client, and finally demote isc-dhcp-client to universe."

The Internet Systems Consortium continues working on its own replacement for ISC DHCPD as the "Kea" DHCP server under the MPL 2.0 license but currently without any new DHCP client code, thus for now at least Ubuntu is focused on switching to dhcpcd(5).