Date Thu, 1 Jan 2015 12:14:15 -0800 Subject Re: [PATCH] Revert "cfg80211: make WEXT compatibility unselectable" From Linus Torvalds <> On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 11:44 AM, Lennart Sorensen

<lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

>

> ifconfig seems to just be broken for many cases of perfectly nice features

> in the kernel.



So I'm not saying "ifconfig is wonderful". It's not.



But I *am* saying that "changing user interfaces and then expecting

people to change is f*cking stupid".



The fact is, ifconfig is simple for the simple cases, but more

importantly, a lot of people learnt how to use it. Saying "you should

all change, because we made up a new syntax" is not good policy.



The people who did "ip" could have fairly easily have done a wrapper

around the same code that also left the old "ifconfig" syntax. Then,

distros could have trivially just dropped the old "ifconfig" package,

and entirely replaced it with the new "ip" package.



As it is, we have two different models, and they'll basically stay

around forever.



For something like ifconfig, very few people care. But *all* the same

arguments are true wrt "iw" and "iwconfig".



The people who are trying to deprecate the WEXT interfaces should put

the blame firmly where it belongs - on the people who thought that

"we'll just ignore all old history".



Because people who think that "we'll just redesign everything" are

actually f*cking morons. Really.



There's a real reason the kernel has the "no regression" policy. And

that reason is that I'm not a moron.



History matter. Legacy uses matter.



Linus





