Scumbag Debian making Unix not work right since the 90s.
I can't tell you how many straightforward Unix configuration things -- network interfaces, resolv.conf, initscripts, etc. just plain can't be edited on a Debian or Ubuntu system except through Debian-specific tools because if you do, the Debian-spoecific tools will clobber your changes and/or other Debian-specific things won't work right.
This is why I use Arch. It's like everything I could want out of a Linux: the simplicity of Slackware, the completeness of Debian (if not quite as huge as Debian without the AUR), the rolling release schedule of Gentoo.
What does Debian have to do with update-motd? As far as I know Debian does not do anything particularly funky with the motd. On my Debian testing computer it is a symlink to /var/run/motd which is a static file generated at boot.
This specific instance of pointless complexity seems to be almost only the work of of Ubuntu.
The parent is probably using this as an excuse to rail on things like the auto-generated config files that can't be edited directly (e.g. the grub/grub2 config files).
I can't tell you how many straightforward Unix configuration things -- network interfaces, resolv.conf, initscripts, etc. just plain can't be edited on a Debian or Ubuntu system except through Debian-specific tools because if you do, the Debian-spoecific tools will clobber your changes and/or other Debian-specific things won't work right.
This is why I use Arch. It's like everything I could want out of a Linux: the simplicity of Slackware, the completeness of Debian (if not quite as huge as Debian without the AUR), the rolling release schedule of Gentoo.