Network Manager

[Jon Savage]

> Thirdly, as far as I can see NetworkManager
> tries to make my WiFi card (a bog-standard Orinico Gold PCMCIA card)
> perform operations that it is not capable of,
> causing my laptop to hang.
Have you tried the cvs version of the drivers from:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/orinoco/
I had similar problems with lockups etc. and the upstream drivers
fixed the issue for me,
> Fourthly, as you mention it is not clear what relation
> NetworkManager has to NetworkManagerInfo.
> On my laptop the latter program sometimes starts the little windmill icon,
> and sometimes does not,
It works for me 99% of the time right now, not bad for a bleeding edge
feature IMHO.
<snip> 
> A working network wizard would be a great addition to Linux.
> Sadly NetworkManager does not currently fulfil that role.
Again it 'just works' for me, just have to compile the upstream
drivers when I uprade kernel.
Hopefully some of the upstream functionality will make its way
downstream in the not so distant future.
Bests
JS