On Wed, 17 Nov 2021 at 16:19, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 11:51 AM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek > <zbyszek@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 03:49:55AM +0100, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote: > > > 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. > > > > The same applies for nft and ss ;) Those tools are supposed to be the future, > > but using them feels as if the people who wrote them never used them. > > > > Dunno, maybe we can keep wireless-tools package? Is it a burden to > > keep in the distro? > > The problems is it doesn't provide huge amounts of useful information > for modern HW like anything after 11a/11g like no support for > 11n/ac/ax HW and it doesn't report a lot of the newer available > frequencies like newer added 5Ghz bands so while it does provide some > slightly useful information if you actually look closely a lot of it > is actually incorrect. > > For example it reports I don't have encryption on my 11ac WiFi which > is connected to a WPA3 AP likely because it doesn't understand it. Is > the nicely formatted information useful if it's actively wrong? It > would probably more useful to alias iwconfig to "iw dev" as that > information is close to what iwconfig provides but is actually > accurate on vaguely modern hardware. "iw dev" reports SSID, channel number and a lot of other useless information, such as center and width of the channel (iwconfig reports current bitrate, link quality and signal level, which are far more useful), MAC (iwconfig reports the APs MAC instead) or multicast statistics that are all equal to 0. I don't see what piece of output from iwconfig is not accurate, at least with my hardware (11ac). -- Iñaki Úcar _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
