IP may be better from an ABI standpoint, but I still find its output to be much harder to parse with the Mk 1 Eyeball than ifconfig. Most of that is probably just ip shoving more information on the screen than ifconfig, but most of the information isn't useful 99% of the time and maybe it would be nicer if ip pared down some of the "qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default" noise unless someone adds a "verbose" parameter?
Or maybe only show them in the basic use case when they are set to something other than the default?
All of the "valid_lft" lines add a lot of visual noise.
While I agree that different defaults might be nice, modern versions of ip support a -br[ief] option which is pretty nice:
$ ip -br a
lo UNKNOWN 127.0.0.1/8 ::1/128
eth0 UP 10.123.45.67/24 fe80::7ed3:aff:fe51:4612/64
$ ip -br l
lo UNKNOWN 00:00:00:00:00:00 <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP>
eth0 UP 7c:d3:0a:51:46:12 <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP>
'ip -br a' get real messy if you have IP6 unfortunately. IPv6 hosts like to make lots and lots of addresses, which all get smooshed together on a single line of hard-on-the-eyeballs hex noise.
Well yes but come on daddyo (I'm a granddad btw), who still routinely uses an 80 column terminal these days 8) Besides, you can always feed the output to awk for an easier on the eyes report. I have three IPv6 including the link local address on my wlp2s0 and they all fit on one line with the IPv4.
I've just run up the manual and the kool kids could be using 'ip --json --pretty address' or 'ip -j a | jq'
This - you think - new tool will be better and then are blinded :) If they would just move the noise down one line so you could see interface name without BROADCAST, MULTICAST, mtu 1500 qdisc up blah blah.
Or maybe only show them in the basic use case when they are set to something other than the default?
All of the "valid_lft" lines add a lot of visual noise.