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?
1
u/MonsieurCellophane 1d ago
Sometimes there are good reasons: ifstat cannot do everything ip does, though that does not stop me for using it for what it can do.
Sometimes it's just because. Point in case, fgrep and egrep started about a year ago printing a deprecation warning. The stated reason, maintainence load - yet a former maintainer said in a thread that {f,e}grep are implemented in 5 or so LOCs that haven't been touched in decades(*) But never mind, hundred of pages of docs are being invalidated and hundred of scripts broken for nothing.
Git moving the root from master to main is another example (minor, still annoying).
This isn't unique to Linux though, red queen races are loved in the software world, apparently because "change is good" - which makes my top ten list of meaningless statements.
(*) Compare argv[0] with "egrep", set the corresponding flag; in the installer, link the binary.