I know what you mean, and agree to some extent. But I doubt that statement holds up in this case. >Ifconfig could have been augmented to support the new, perfo

I know what you mean, and agree to some extent. But I doubt that statement holds up in this case. >Ifconfig could have been augmented to support the new, performant ways to do the things, and the new, cool things; I don't think that could've happened. You are thinking very narrowly, just about ifconfig command. Linux has a lot more networking things that aren't there in UNIX (or even in the BSDs for that matter). There have been many networking concepts introduced in linux that would warrant creating a completely different set of tools. Ofcourse, shoehorning all the new features behind current net-tools binaries is an option. But if you see the elegance in the current with which `ip` can be used, I think you would reconsider your stance.