Operating systems with much more reliable and user-friendly network configuration interfaces (Windows and Mac) continue to permit advanced users to fiddle with their settings on the command line without actively impeding them.
Desktop Linux has gone from assuming users are developers to assuming users are morons who must be protected from themselves. This, and some other imbalances (such as surrendering good sense to a deified few designers) brought on by attempting to imitate the established "friendly" systems without actually understanding them is at the root of the continued failure to gain serious traction.
If you think nmcli qualifies as command line network configuration, you've never done any advanced network configuration at all. nmcli is a bad joke, with all the limitations of NetworkManager itself, and a really crappy interface to boot.
iproute2 is the gold standard of command-line network configuration on Linux, and for good reason. That NetworkManager conflicts with it instead of taking proper advantage of it is the whole problem.
Yes. I was never advocating advanced configuration. Since when did Windows and OS X allow advanced network configuration through the command line? NetworkManager is supposed to be a simple, user-friendly tool. My mother does not know what "static IP addresses" or "DHCP" or "gateway" are, she just wants the damn wifi to work. Can you imagine her typing in iproute2 commands?
Windows allows some, I've had to mess with it in the past. Mac OS X allows all the command line network configuration you would expect of a BSD, since, well, it basically is a BSD, while at the same time having a great, user-friendly configuration interface for the 80% case.
I don't care about your mother, she shouldn't be on the command line in the first place, and if she were with nmcli, you'd still have to explain all those terms to her (and they're very basic terms, I refuse to believe your mother is actually that stupid, mine sure isn't).
You've entirely missed the point -- repeatedly. Your mother gets to configure from a friendly GUI limited to the functionality she needs, but anyone who needs anything more advanced is screwed out of it because they can't have the GUI and direct access to underlying functionality, because the former actively impedes the latter. This is a uniquely Desktop Linux state of affairs, no other OS behaves like that.
Desktop Linux has gone from assuming users are developers to assuming users are morons who must be protected from themselves. This, and some other imbalances (such as surrendering good sense to a deified few designers) brought on by attempting to imitate the established "friendly" systems without actually understanding them is at the root of the continued failure to gain serious traction.