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by darkarmani 4573 days ago
> ifconfig was deprecated on linux long ago. While it is compatible with other unixes, it doesn't really map onto the capabilities of the modern linux stack well.

Long ago? Centos 6.4 still has it. My Mac (BSD) has it. I never suggested that it is stupid to add software (ip) that is better, but why would they deliberately remove it when it is such an expected command and works across other unixes? I have trouble believing that it consumes much disk space.

1 comments

CentOS is not removing deprecated things and Fedora is. This is the difference here.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifconfig#Current_status

"Modern Linux distributions are in the process of deprecating ifconfig and route..."

Deliberately removing something means you don't have to maintain it any more and can spend your time improving the better tool rather than bug-fixing the legacy one.

I understand improving, but it wouldn't take much effort to make it user friendly, by wrapping over the ifconfig command for at least the reporting functionality. It could still call ip underneath.

There are ways to handle it that make it backwards compatible and user friendly without only a little extra effort. It's not a sexy task, so who cares about usability.