<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Dan Williams wrote: <blockquote id="mid_1242060668_28322_85_camel_localhost_localdomain" cite="mid:1242060668.28322.85.camel@localhost.localdomain" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 15:56 +0200, Michael Nielsen wrote: </pre> <blockquote id="StationeryCiteGenerated_1" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">2. The network interfaces are being bound to the user interface, such that if your X fails for some reason, or you are running on a text console, you are unable to open the wireless configuration, at least it's not obvious how you do it, without X running. The configuration for the network interfaces are so tightly bound to the user interface, such that if there is no user interface there are no network interfaces. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> This is false. </pre> </blockquote> <blockquote id="mid_1242060668_28322_85_camel_localhost_localdomain" cite="mid:1242060668.28322.85.camel@localhost.localdomain" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> NetworkManager will read (and write!) system network configuration for wired & wireless devices, and can bring those devices up before login. I think what you may be missing is an easy one-command tool to activate/deactivate those, and that's fairly simple with dbus-send, and yes, its something that should be written. But in now way is network tied to a UI or unusable without a UI. </pre> </blockquote> No it's not false, from the users point of view... Use the wireless connection function in gnome, and reboot - does your machine go on to the network, before you log in or after? >From a users point of view, the Network is directly tied into the GUI. I have tried to find out how to get the wireless connection that can be configured under gnome or kde, to work, so that I can get NTP to function properly, and how to get fstab to mount NFS, and CIFS drives during boot. Without having to go to the command line - it is easy for me use the command line - but try to explain that to a non-power user, over the phone. There does not appear to be any obvious way to make the network configuration permanent, the nice applet for connecting to the wireless networks, does not seem to have any way to write a permanent configuration. the other graphical application under administration tools, can do it, but is no where near as easy to use. Not that it really is a big problem for me, as I usually end up disabling it, and switching to manually configuring wpa_supplicant, and the network interfaces. I've entered this debate, because I'm concerned with the perceived problems that these forks are causing, and that things are now becoming non-obvious, such as the network issue. These kinds of things are the arguments that are used for NOT using Linux. </body> </html>