Re: A comment on NetworkManager

[Casey Harkins <caseyharkins gmail com>]

Russell Harrison wrote:
> "simplicity" of the interface.  Right now its so simple I don't see how 
> any layperson could understand it, there just isn't any feed back or 

I don't understand this at all. I have a few laptop users who are not 
very computer literate (not even on Windows), but have no problems using 
NetworkManager, without any instruction.

> Profiles are a big thing for me since I want to be able to deploy 
> laptops on our network and configure them by installing an rpm.  Its so 
> much cleaner than creating a bunch of documentation, to tell them how to 
> set it up themselves.  That's confusing, they don't need to know what 
> authentication mechanism we use, or even care what the network is 
> named.  They just want to be on it.

Unless each user has multiple configurations, I don't see the need for 
profiles here. As for setting their defaults up for them from an rpm, 
just create an rpm that runs gconftool-2 (in %post) to set the 
appropriate NetworkManager settings. You make these defaults, or even 
mandatory settings (so they can't change them).

> 1.) Wireless networks list.
> There is no "Search for wireless networks" or "Refresh wireless networks 

Ideally, NetworkManager should update the wireless networks list 
automatically without these options. If that can't be done (do most 
hardware wireless switches expose their state through their kernel 
drivers?), then maybe a refresh option would be necessary.

> 2.) The configuration issue.
> In my view NetworkManager is one of the most intransparent linux 
> applications out there. There's no Documentation (correct me if I'm 

Documentation would be nice and I'm sure the developers would welcome 
any contributions in that regard.

> wrong), there is no configuration file easily accessible and there are 
> weird things going on with resolv.conf. How is it configured? How can I 

It uses gconf for configuration and the distribution's native network 
configuration.

> 3.) Profiles.
> I know, you don't like them. You think, they are an inconvenient user 
> experience. Well, while I understand your pursuit of simplicity i don't 
> really get what is so bad about profiles. You could present the user 
> with some sort of a default profile. No further setting up is required. 
> It just uses the settings specified in /etc/network/interfaces as usual. 

NetworkManager uses the distribution's native configuration. So if the 
distribution's network configuration tools support profiles (Fedora Core 
for example), then I believe they would work for NetworkManager as well.

-casey