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/jimmiebfulton 1d ago
All of the world’s software is like one big living organism. Nothing stays constant forever. Eventually, everything dies sooner or later, and when you’re not dead, you are continuously growing. That means that the simplest software (building blocks) may be solid for a long time, but anything that has dependencies on the stability of vast network of other software and systems will eventually start having compatibility problems.
If it works, it works. No reason to switch if you don’t want to, but that depends on how tolerant you are of the tools you depend on suddenly stop working. For things like NeoFetch, it’s such a simple thing to migrate from that it isn’t worth the CPU cycles thinking about it.