[ChocolateGod]

> hot take "predictable network names" should have been a kernel flag - give us all our eth0 in peace. i shouldn't need to set a flag to get back a default feature.

No, because the feature being on by default does nothing but make your interface names longer, but being off can be the difference between a restarted server having or not having network access because of undocumented behaviour with it's firmware causing the network interfaces to come up in different orders.

[bcrl]

Personally, I find the predictable network names feature infuriating 100% of the time. Changing the name of network interfaces made nothing better, and actively made things worse for systems with a single NIC (virtually none of the systems I use with a single nic use the same name). Network interface configurations could already be bound to MAC addresses rather than names, and that had been implemented even before the enpXXX style names came into being.

Persistent ethX names were far better to me, and we had those before enpXXX via udev. At least then when I logged into a random system with a single NIC it was called eth0. With 2 NICs they were eth0 and eth1. Simple to predict, no thinking required (unless the system already had bound those names to other MAC addresses).

Usability dies by a thousand cuts. Forcing needlessly complex behaviour onto people with simple use-cases is not an improvement.

[ChocolateGod]

< Persistent ethX names were far better to me

They weren't persistent, that was the problem.

[JackSlateur]

eth0 is predictable: a given system will always have the same interface for the same physical hardware

enp0s31f6 is unpredictable

The whole operation is a lie!