Re: talk about going around robinhood's barn...

[Steev Klimaszewski <steev gentoo org>]

<snipping everything as its fairly pointless (no offense)>

The reason that we ask about the chipsets, and your interfaces file, is 
that each distro handles wireless differently, this includes the way 
they install and use NetworkManager.  Gentoo does patch a little bit to 
the backend (should probably check that in some time soonish) - however, 
Ubuntu will *IGNORE* any devices that are *configured* in 
/etc/network/interfaces so - whether or not they are active, if they are 
located in the file, simply comment them out.

We can't tell you if $RANDOM_USB_STICK works because we need to know 
chipsets - some drivers are known to be buggy and may require 
workarounds that we do not include in NetworkManager, does it work with 
wpa_supplicant - does it continue to work with wpa_supplicant if you 
issue a scan every 5-10 seconds...  Things like this.  Yes, 
networkmanager can handle multiple wireless cards in a machine, and even 
multiple wireless *and* a wired interface - although wired will take 
precedence.  You can only have 1 wired or wireless interface active at a 
time however.


As long as hal can see the interface, and it's driver is exporting the 
information that NetworkManager needs, then there should be no issues 
with using the card - UNLESS - it is *configured* in your 
/etc/network/interfaces file.