I have found the "ip" command usable for a few things like setting routes (it works in some cases where the "route" command fails to put in the exact route I want). It's also a shorter output to see all the interfaces and their addresses. But, I have yet to figure out from the "man ip" page just how to completely replace "ifconfig". I would assume something is big as all that stuff in the "ip" command should be able to. I suspect that its complexity is overwhelming the man page.

I'm curious if there is a push to move the world from "ifconfig" to "ip". I recall someone saying so a few years ago. But "ifconfig" still seems to be as popular as ever. Most online network configuration documentation still shows "ifconfig" far more often than "ip". That is, when it is at that level (so, not including documentation that uses distro specific config files).

I started looking for a more comprehensive and clear explanation of how to use the "ip" command, hoping for the possibility of switching to use it completely. I haven't found that yet. Anyone seen such a thing? Or is "ip" really not worth pursuing?

Rush? Not at all. ip has been around for ages and people still use ifconfig. As far as I know, ifconfig calls ip. Anyway, I'vee been using ip for a long time now and I still have things to learn, for sure. I think it's much more powerful than ifconfig (plus the output, as you said, is much briefer).

Apparently, ifconfig and ip set up multiple IPv4 addresses to the same interface in different ways (ifconfig uses alias names while ip does not). So it does not seem possible that ifconfig merely calls ip. They both do multiple ipv6 addresses the clean way.

I am wanting to know if it is worthwhile learning the obscure syntax of ip.

I don't think that ifconfig calls ip cause ifconfig was there before. As well one can also use ip to set up aliased interface like ifconfig does. It's just more to write.

As it goes for me after reading about ip and trying to use it I as well stumbled over the badly written man page. Comparing it to other man pages it just plain sucks. It does not tell anything about what can be achived using ip just only how. I guess one has to know about networking things to adopt ip to it. BUT I like the seperation of the ip command it is easier to read if one got a line like ip addr add 10.0.0.20/24 dev eth0 than ifconfig options with broadcast networkaddress and alike. Maybe there should be a smooth transition to ip cause it just got more power. If you have time use ip if in a rush use ifconfig (assuming one is more fluent with ifconfig).

In contrast to your experience i find it easier to set up the default route using ifconfig insted of ip...

I know networking and what it can do. But with the ip command, I can barely figure out the syntax for some thing. It's like a whole new language there. Some of the syntax references make no sense and I have to jump around to see what means what. And it's way too big to get it all on one page. It's just not intuitive. But I have figured out how to get routing table entries added given that the traditional route command has problems accepting what I want to add in some cases (like IPv6).