Have you tried Winbox? I suppose you talk about command prompt, I also don’t like it, comparing to Cisco that can help you step by step and autocomplete. But Winbox is great, and quickly I can do everything, for me much better than Cisco
Would you and others experienced in OpenWRT kindly join this thread to hopefully share more of your experience?
Thank you.
Leaving the OP’s tone and frustration expression aside, I do think MikroTik would improve immensely by standardizing their CLI, masking certain layers of abstractions and making the CLI chipset-agnostic.
I did have my “eureka” / “aha” moment (or after finding the problem, rather “WTF” and “f… me sideways”) earlier today (more in http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/rb3011-vlan-switching-routing-and-dhcp-server/170752/9). Believe many hours of troubleshooting could’ve been saved if duplicate features/functionality of “/interface bridge” and “/interface ethernet switch” had been merged into a single control.
MIKROTIK is making a good hardware products!
The oonly thing what succkkss, is user NONfriendly software interface 
More then 10 years, i was trying to offer to clients (end users) a MIKROTIK products - no success.
Clients are NOT accepting such an UBEROVERPOWERED software.
But every 5 years, i am checking, are there some changes or not?!?!?
GL
Pretty safe to answer: interface did not change since 2019. See ya in 2029!
Use “mikrotik home” android app for those clients
yeah, that’s a nice app
have you fixed the permissions yet so we can give a user tikapp or permissions to user the home app without needing to grant them full winbox access?
touché 
I, for one, have always appreciated the verbosity of the user interface. Yes, there are a million settings, and I understand that it can be overwhelming in the beginning, but make no mistake—Winbox is a great learning tool. In my early days, I learned much more from poking around in Winbox than I ever could have in the monolith called IOS.
My advice to the OP would be: if you want to implement VLANs, learn about VLANs from a standards point of view. RFCs make the internet work, and MikroTik follow them too.
New in this forum, I registered just because of this comment and make me laugth.
I just love Mikrotik.
Hi!
I know the feeling of frustration the first time you use a MikroTik when you are used to devices from other well known brands. But hey! It’s like learning a new language on how to speak networking 
Mikrotik is complicated yes.... , cisco too, stormshield too, fortinet too, netapp too.
Repair a car is complicated too. Create ansible playbooks/roles too.
It's not mikrotik problem.
I think mikortik need to rework the documentation to be like netapp or ansible, release a doc per version and redact detailled upgrade paths and différences, lost/add/changes between versions.
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My first approch with mikrotik wasn't good, winbox was an horror for me at this time.... because coming from vyatta, cisco and edgerouter/edgeswitch.
But after fews days of reading docs, trying.... i found mikrotik better than edgerouter and more flexible than edgerouter/edgeswitch and cisco devices
In 2021, decision was taken to kill all others hardwares and replace all by mikrotik.
Mikrotik still support all hardware.... i can still use the latest OS with the first "lab rb2011 router" ! It's just amazing ; comparing with ubiquiti edgerouter without os release during theirs 2 last years of life with me...
THIS:index_pointing_up:
Definitely agree with this. Theres a ton of various documentation floating around. Some for 6.X, some for 7.X, some of which happens to work for each. Also “wiki” vs. “help”. I tend to use fairly up to date versions, and so its pretty easy to see what pertains, but what if you had to stay on a certain older version for “reasons”? Use the way back machine!
That´s exactly my opinion as well, but I´d like to add: MT should add more and well documented examples to each topic.
There are many good examples on this forum, but they are hard to find.
I hope mikrotik support/leader will read my remark about the documentation and i hope in few monts, see an announcement about documentation.
Amongst our team we have a saying that “There is nothing you can not do with a mikrotik”.
Yeah sure.. of course there are things you can’t do. However when crap hits the fan and you need the networking equivalent of a Flipper Zero, then a mikrotik is where the team turns to for creative solutions to difficult situations.
Yes, anything is possible with mikrotik…
- i wasn’t able to have ipv6 fully fonctionnal with edgerouter ; switching to mikrotik : everything work fine and easily
- don’t want add a RPI for pihole on each remotes sites… i’ve just run a container on each remote rb5009
- found the cisco wifi caps and capsman so complicated and expensive > switch to mikrotik wifi caps, performance enhanced, easy maintenance… and priceless
- run wg instead ovpn for site2site with edgerouter : impossible… with mikrotik, it’s easy
Well I kind of agree on some points of the author.
And surprise-surprise… I am just another sysadmin for more than 25 years.
As all of us I had started with Cisco…
First time I meet ROS on a white-box PC used as a wireless router in 2001 installed by my TLD ISP.
Then my experience evolved… I had become certified with about 5-6 MT certificates… used a bunch of devices from MT in years. Had at least 20 in my home lab.
But then - in last 5 years MT froze in time… they stop evolving.
Oh they still develop the ROS which is damn good and got faster networks but they stay in the same segment.
Just horizontal development (more of the same) - not vertical (new classes of products).
They just stay in the niche with no serious competition - small ISPs and CPEs. No enterprise… not even proper corporate solutions.
What about stacking, what about port security and FFE? Also serious lacks in implementing newer WiFi standards.
No central management/monitoring solution… (don’t count on Dude).
No serious support structure and support contracts.
And to play with the big boys you need this.
Yes I know… MT was used in many corporate organization in a way to provide economical solution for something small or not that important.
Well they’d implement the containers! Good! But forget to add storage options except to cheap devices with not enough CPU power.
They add ROSE on a routers…
But with time they become more and more pushed out of the way, by other cheep and more well developed brands - some of them even cheaper.
And why is this - well reasons are many … but is not me to point to the CEOs.
In 20 years they had still not developed any network security solutions, not any firewall, not any sd-wan (even is pretty easy to be done with MT).
Documentation is a mess, scripting language is not completely documented, many new features are not fully developed and takes quite long to be finished. Why no modular structures in the scripts? Why no script library which can be imported?
Certification… oh this is another mess - why new certificates do not reconfirm the existence of the old? Why have to start from scratch if I miss the time?
And what we are getting this day? An RDS? For what??? With half the money I’ll do it with old dell/hp/supermicro server and will be better.
If they had used proper approach this will be the best hyperconverged system for SBS and SOHO - now is just glorious NAS.
Don’t get me wrong - I like MT - here are many good things. But this not means to close our eyes and shout “blasphemy” on every criticism.
I’m serious fan of MT, but if they do not move soon - then I will move … and this will happens with many more.
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