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Simon Tathamsimontatham@hachyderm.io
Jun 30, 2026, 7:48 AM
@castaway in fairness, not everything about the old ones was great. I never forgave 'route' in particular for defaulting to doing DNS lookups on all its numeric addresses. Dammit, why do you think I'm _running_ 'route'? 9/10 times it's because my network is broken, and the last thing I want is it dithering forever failing to contact the name server. At least 'ip route' doesn't make you always add the 'work properly' option.
But it's a good point that several of the most common ifconfig and route runes could easily be implemented as wrappers translating into the corresponding ip rune.
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Replies

Jess Robinsoncastaway@fosstodon.org
Jun 30, 2026, 7:55 AM
@simontatham yup, agreed. I don't need the old tools themselves, just the commands
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Mans Rmansr@society.oftrolls.com
Jun 30, 2026, 11:12 AM
@simontatham @castaway The reason for replacing ifconfig with ip is that the command syntax for the former can't request a lot configuration the latter can (because it was written for that purpose).
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Simon Tathamsimontatham@hachyderm.io
Jun 30, 2026, 12:38 PM
@mansr @castaway I'm sure you're right, and I've even used some of that functionality myself, but it _still_ doesn't change the resulting lack of enthusiasm to learn the new thing thoroughly.
To decide whether it's worth putting in the effort, the question is not whether the change happened for a good reason. It's whether another similar change is likely in the future. If it happened because other stuff made it genuinely necessary, who's to say other stuff might not make it genuinely necessary again?
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arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
Jun 30, 2026, 12:54 PM
@mansr @simontatham @castaway That's a reason for creating ip, not for replacing ifconfig. Those are two different things.
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Mans Rmansr@society.oftrolls.com
Jun 30, 2026, 3:32 PM
@arclight @simontatham @castaway Who stops you building and running ifconfig? Both tools can happily coexist.
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Jess Robinsoncastaway@fosstodon.org
Jun 30, 2026, 3:33 PM
@mansr @arclight @simontatham nobody particularly (and I do, I run Gentoo).. but not all the boxes I use are admined by me
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Tony Finchfanf@mendeddrum.org
Jun 30, 2026, 11:45 PM
@mansr @simontatham @castaway i was never convinced by this argument because the BSDs managed to extend ifconfig with new features
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Mans Rmansr@society.oftrolls.com
Jul 1, 2026, 6:44 AM
@fanf @simontatham @castaway I haven't looked closely at the BSDs, but the ip syntax is still more logical and more easily extended when needed. Personally, I prefer it even though it meant getting used to a new thing.
Why is this coming up now though? It's been 20 years.
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clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛clacke@libranet.de
Jul 4, 2026, 11:16 AM
@mansr As OP explained in the second post, it came up just because it came up. ( hachyderm.io/@simontatham/1168… )
I think conservative interface evolution is an important aspect, and I think reworking user interfaces to new requirements rather than building epicycles on top of
whatever we came up with in the past is important too.
I think on a modern Linux-based operating system, it's still possible to install both "ip" and "ifconfig" without conflict, and both will work, but there is no doubt that "ip" is the default in the modern environment.
Maybe the new interface is superior, but the point is that the change had a cost, the counterpoint being that legacy has a cost too. As with everything, it's a balance and a tradeoff.
@fanf @castaway @simontatham
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