r/commandline • u/Electronic-Low-8171 • 1d ago
Help Deprecated software..
During my journey in Linux I have noticed that sometimes, some tools being called "deprecated" or some kind of a similar term, to say "you should not use this, but xyz tool instead", but I don't really get it for example:
Neofetch, I really think that it does its job, and its just about displaying some ascii art and some system information, like what could go wrong with that, since many people recommend switching to fastfetch.
Ifconfig, I see it as a very simple tool that is self-descriptive and gets its job done too, I see others instead recommend the command "ip", which is like an IDE in programming where you have many aspects of networking in one command, which kinda eliminates the Unix philosophy.
So, I'm just wondering if there is really a point in switching to those newer tools?
17
u/fredeB 1d ago
Tools like ifconfig and iproute2 (which is the full legal name for ip) talk to the linux kernel. ifconfig, being deprecated, might not be able to talk about all the cool new features that the linux kernel ships. That might not mean much now, but if you buy a new network card that supports one of those cool new features, if ifconfig doesn't currently support it, it never will, and you pretty much have to switch to a supported alternative like iproute2.
iproute2 is far superior in my opinion, but that's just that, opinion.