I'm renting a VPS from Linode with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) installed on it.
But the default DNS server from Linode doesn't resolve a domain name which I really need it to resolve. Therefore, I tried to edit my netplan configuration to change the DNS server to Google's one, since the VPS is obviously headless. I edited the file /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml to contain the following:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system

# For more information, see netplan(5).

network:

  version: 2

  renderer: networkd

  ethernets:

    eth0:

      dhcp4: yes

      nameservers:

        addresses: [8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4]

Ubuntu 20.04 was using networkd as the netplan backend by default. I linted the YAML and it is correctly formatted. DHCP is on by default (as by setting dhcp4: yes) and turning it off (by setting dhcp4: no) does not correct the problem. eth0 is the name of my network connection as per ip a. However, whenever I run sudo netplan apply after saving the netplan configuration file the active nameserver does not seem to change as per sudo systemd-resolve --status. Even forcing networkd to restart by running sudo ip link set eth0 down and sudo ip link set eth0 up or restarting systemd-resolved by running sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved does nothing.

Why is it so difficult to change the DNS server on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS? Am I missing something here?

Thank you so much in advance for your help,

Joshua

EDIT:
Output of sudo lshw -C network:

  *-network

       description: Ethernet controller

       product: Virtio network device

       vendor: Red Hat, Inc.

       physical id: 4

       bus info: pci@0000:00:04.0

       version: 00

       width: 64 bits

       clock: 33MHz

       capabilities: msix bus_master cap_list rom

       configuration: driver=virtio-pci latency=0

       resources: irq:20 ioport:c080(size=64) memory:febd3000-febd3fff memory:fe

008000-fe00bfff memory:feb80000-febbffff

     *-virtio2

          description: Ethernet interface

          physical id: 0

          bus info: virtio@2

          logical name: eth0

          serial: f2:3c:93:91:e5:ed

          capabilities: ethernet physical

          configuration: autonegotiation=off broadcast=yes driver=virtio_net

driverversion=1.0.0 ip=170.187.185.46 link=yes multicast=yes

Output of sudo ls -al /etc/resolv.conf:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 Feb 24 06:53 /etc/resolv.conf -> /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf

Output of sudo cat /etc/resolv.conf:

# This file is managed by man:systemd-resolved(8). Do not edit.

#

# This is a dynamic resolv.conf file for connecting local clients to the

# internal DNS stub resolver of systemd-resolved. This file lists all

# configured search domains.

#

# Run "resolvectl status" to see details about the uplink DNS servers

# currently in use.

#

# Third party programs must not access this file directly, but only through the

# symlink at /etc/resolv.conf. To manage man:resolv.conf(5) in a different way,

# replace this symlink by a static file or a different symlink.

#

# See man:systemd-resolved.service(8) for details about the supported modes of

# operation for /etc/resolv.conf.



nameserver 127.0.0.53

options edns0 trust-ad

search members.linode.com

Output of sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces:

# ifupdown has been replaced by netplan(5) on this system.  See

# /etc/netplan for current configuration.

# To re-enable ifupdown on this system, you can run:

#    sudo apt install ifupdown

Output of cat /etc/netplan/*.yaml:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system

# For more information, see netplan(5).

network:

  version: 2

  renderer: networkd

  ethernets:

    eth0:

      dhcp4: true

      dhcp4-overrides:

        use-dns: false

      nameservers:

        addresses: [8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4]