[iso1631]

Until about 5 years ago debian used /etc/network/interfaces since the 90s to configure network.

Redhat has used /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts.

Then the network stack was changed in the kernel, and traditional tools (ifconfig) carried on working, but didn't expose all the new features, so a new tool to configure your ethernet link was created called "ip" which you had to use despite not running IP on that interface.

But things still worked. Those with complex requirements would drop in extra things into post-up hooks - e.g. I add route tagging for my dual homed machines so that traffic coming in on eth0 would go back out of eth0's gateway, and traffic on eth1 would go back out of eth1, and sockets specifically bound to eth0 (or eth1) would use the correct gateway.

(oh yes, upto about 5 years ago network cards were called eth0 through ethx, now they have unpredictable names)

However as is common across software nowadays, this wasn't good enough, and had to be redone. By dozens of different groups. Because cloud.

[a1o]

On eth0 times it was a lot more fun to script things.

I also felt wpa-supplicant was a very dramatic name.