The logic behind user/system settings

[Ozan Çağlayan <ozan pardus org tr>]

Hi,

I'm from the core developer team of a linux distribution called Pardus Linux[0].

Years ago, when there wasn't even Network-Manager, we developed a network management backend in C/Python that we're still using
in our distribution but due to lack of time/interest it's getting older and older which risks to not fulfill the current
desktop user's needs.

So we're seriously thinking about migrating to Network-Manager as soon as the KDE4 manager/plasmoid gets ready as Pardus comes
with KDE by default.

I'm currently experimenting with NM 0.8 and nm-applet. Here are some questions:

* There's this "Auto ifaceX" default/unremovable connection which is Up'ped by default when NM is launched. Okay, it's
good to have a default profile which will always try hard to bring the machine online. But as far as I understand, the connections
that I'm adding from nm-applet are considered as some sort of user-settings so if that specific user which added that connection
profile never loggs in, should I forcely stick with that automatic dhcp profile? Isn't there something like system-wide connections
which will take effect when NM is spawned? How can the root user setup a manual connection on his server system which doesn't even have a
desktop session?

* Why does nm-applet's tray icon's left-click menu provides a sub-menu to VPN connections? It's weird. That context menu seems to have
dynamic content e.g. when I add a connection for eth0, it appears alltogether with Auto eth0; if there are no 802.11 devices, there
are no content related to 802.11 connections but that "VPN connections" is always there which I think is not at all human-interface
centric and ergonomic.

* What are the plugins (ifcfg-rh for redhat/fedora for example) for?

Thanks,
Ozan Caglayan

[0]: http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng