keyfile plugin as new install default for NetworkManager in F11?

[Martin Ebourne]

Fedora is currently using the ifcfg plugin for NetworkManager that stores 
system wide network settings in the old network scripts format. This is 
clearly useful when upgrading a machine with a working configuration from 
an old Fedora release. However the legacy format makes it difficult to 
understand the settings and restricts the functionality somewhat.

NetworkManager also includes an alternative system wide settings plugin 
called keyfile. This stores system wide connections in ini format files 
in the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections directory. These are a lot 
easier to understand and read, and provide much better functionality (eg. 
system wide WPA is trivial), and most importantly of all provides a much 
more user friendly and consistent GUI giving an excellent user experience.

I switched to keyfile with the Fedora 9 release since ifcfg was not 
working for WPA. Back then it was necessary to write the config files by 
hand which took quite some figuring out. With Fedora 10 it's now as 
simple as configure the network in NetworkManager in the usual way, then 
just tick the 'Available to all users' box in the NetworkManager edit 
settings dialogue.

Are there any plans to switch to keyfile as the default for new installs 
with Fedora 11? It would seem sensible to leave ifcfg for upgrades, 
perhaps with an easy way to automatically switch to keyfile if desired.

Cheers,
Martin

PS. These two very minor bugs in F10 are all that separates keyfile from 
an excellent user experience for me, on several different machines:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465633
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471734