If you do not use the mlocate database, then you probably don't want to pay the associated performance price, especially on systems with little memory, where updating the database can render the computer unresponsive for a long time.
For more information about the kind of performance problems that the mlocate background indexer can cause, take a look at this Ubuntu bug report:
updatedb.mlocate uses 100% of the hdd IO. The OS is completely unusable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mlocate/+bug/1190696
The bug is from june 2013, and 9 years later, Ubuntu has not even attempted to mitigate the problem by simply lowering the background indexer's disk priority.
From Ubuntu 22.04, plocate is now the default locate implementation, replacing mlocate. The current version of this 'conflicting' package covers plocate too.
On Debian/Ubuntu systems, remove packages locate, mlocate and plocate, and then install the 'conflicting' package to prevent them from ever being installed again, as some packages mention mlocate or plocate as a suggested or recommended dependency. This is one way to do it:
sudo dpkg --remove locate mlocate plocate
sudo dpkg --install mlocate-conflicting-package_1.003_all.debThis 'conflicting' package is not actually a hard, unsurmountable ban, but you should get a conflict warning from your favourite package manager if something wants to install locate, mlocate or plocate again.
Note that, if you just remove package mlocate, then package locate will provide an updatedb tool that ends up referencing /usr/bin/updatedb.findutils instead of /usr/bin/updatedb.mlocate, so you need to remove package locate too.