On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 00:50 -0400, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 23:34 -0500, Jerone Young wrote:
> > Havn't had any problems. It's the real thing. If not then a few
> > package update once the repositories get updated with fc4. It's a good
> > build. I see no faults in it. Only thing I really do wish is the the
> > Network Manger app (the wireless app) was mature enough to be ready
> > for prime time for fc4 :-( . It's there but still has a ways to go.
> > fc4 looking good!
>
> I had one experience with that Network Manager such that I would never
> even try it again, even at gun point. It committed such random acts of
> terrorism (broke all my existing connections, totally torched my routing
> tables, and absolutely refused to be unloaded) that I had to reboot my
> entire laptop to get it off my system and reestablish my wired
> connection. I now manage all my wireless using wpa_supplicant (which
> handles WEP and WPA-* and WPA2-*) and have yet to figure out what anyone
> would even want the Network (Mis)Manager app for unless they were
> gluttons for punishment.
>
Uhm, you see, NetworkManager is *specifically designed* to take over all
networking on the box such that the user won't have install software not
in the core distro, touch configuration files, reconfigure name
resolution service, identity ESS id's, configure WEP keys, invoke DHCP
clients, run shell commands etc. etc.
For instance, today, if I pull out the Ethernet cable, NM will
automatically switch to wireless networking, lookup WEP keys (or ask the
me if it's not cached in the keyring), negotiate DHCP, update the name
resolution service and so forth. I don't have to do a *single thing* and
I get smooth animations and visual feedback on top :-). It just works.
However, to do all this it means that it's pretty difficult to get this
to work with the setup of certain users who, uhm, like total control of
their routing tables, connections and so on. So, if you're the kind of
user that (for some reason) need this, NetworkManager isn't for you
yet.
> Sorry for the rant. An extremely distasteful experience...
No, maybe you're just not the target user for NetworkManager so that may
be why it doesn't work for you. My guess is that NM works pretty well
for the vast majority because they only use wired/wireless networking
and, frankly said, just wants things to work and are less enthusiastic
about technical details.
That said, we're working hard on extending what NM does so it's useful
for more and more people [1] but keep in mind that it will require that
existing software gets adapted such that NetworkManager can control it.
This takes time. We take patches though.
However, another issue (which may be why you didn't have luck with NM)
is that the quality of wireless drivers (and to a certain extent, wired
drivers too) vary a lot and this matters when software, not people, are
configuring them.
David
[1] : we're adding support for VPN software for instance; more stuff
like dial-up, Bluetooth networking, integration with wpa_supplicant is
on the roadmap too