On Wed, 17 Nov 2021 at 03:59, Kevin Kofler via devel
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> The Wireless Extensions support in the kernel has been long replaced
> by the mac80211/cfg80211 support. Disable the kernel options and
> retire the wireless-tools userspace utilities. Wireless Extensions
> only supports a minor subset of the wireless interfaces, predominently
> the WEP interface and userspace has been replaced by iw/libnl/ip
> interfaces which offer a lot more advanced features as well as modern
> 802.11 functionality like WPA.
Users are going to miss the iwconfig tool. Not only is it still being used
out of habit (just like ifconfig from net-tools), but (also just like
ifconfig) it is also much more user-friendly. E.g., running "iwconfig"
without arguments prints a nice summary of the wireless devices and their
properties, such as access point ESSID and BSSID, bit rate, signal level,
etc., whereas running "iw" without arguments prints a 132-line help output
with around a hundred different commands (with no explanation as to what
they do, as that would require even more than 132 lines: the --help output
is 445 lines long). "iw" also exposes implementation details in the most
unfriendly way, by requiring the user to use "dev <devname>", "phy
<phyname>", "wdev <idx>", or "reg" prefixes
depending on the individual
command (and it is entirely unclear to the user why something is a dev
property, a phy property, or both), whereas "iwconfig" takes the same
interface name for all commands.
The new ip, iw, and route tools have clearly been designed by kernel
developers for kernel developers, not for end users or even system
administrators. The old ifconfig and iwconfig are much easier to use.
Cannot agree more.
--
Iñaki Úcar