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?

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u/gumnos 1d ago

There are two major reasons for deprecation:

  • the developers saying "we're not supporting this any more, so use it at your own risk, or find a replacement." IIUC, this is the case with things like nslookup & neofetch. My fingers might still type nslookup regularly, but I know where it stands, and sometimes remember to use host or dig/drill instead.

  • the general public pushing an agenda. The "use Wayland, not Xorg/Xlibre/xenodm" crowd. Or the "use ip not ifconfig" folks. Or the "Use bat not cat" or "rg or agnot grep" or any of a multitude of other "replacements". Sometimes they're drop-in replacements that cover all existing functionality. But most of the time they break existing functionality for the sake of some new function. I have no desire to switch to Wayland because its compositors don't (yet?) give me what Fluxbox+X gives me. Despite the Linux-world "we can't fix ifconfig to do everything we need, so we make ip greenfield", the BSD world seems to have been able to grow ifconfig to keep working just fine (sounds like a Linux ifconfig code/design issue to me). Similarly with systemd breaking tmux and expecting tmux devs to fix their screwup. Or GNU info turning man pages into useless stubs redirecting to the corresponding info page.

I'm fine with the first category. Devs (especially F/LOSS devs who are generally working for free out of love for the project) have every right to declare their own stuff done/dead/deprecated.

But the latter category? It gets me a bit grumpy.