f8: NetworkManager + runlevel 3 problem

[Timothy Murphy]

Jonathan Underwood wrote:

>> > I feel NM tries to do too much.
>> > It would be much better if it concentrated on doing one thing -
>> > dealing with WiFi devices - as well as possible.
>>
>> Gee, the basic Unix philosophy. What a concept!
> 
> A commonly abused piece of wisdom - you can define "one thing" anyway
> you like, and then say a program should do that one thing, according
> to unix philosophy. In this case "dealing with WiFi devices" is not
> "one thing". You have several things to do like  identify the
> hardware, load the right kernel module, bring the device up, scan for
> access points, authenticate, set the route etc etc.

This is actually irrelevant to what I said,
which was that NM should concentrate on WiFi,
where there are lots of problems,
and not get mixed up with other forms of communication
such as ethernet or bluetooth,
which are basically orthogonal to WiFi.

> I tell you (collectively all those moaning in this thread) what, if
> you don't like the NetworkManager tool, and/or you don't like the
> network-scripts based legacy applications in Fedora, here are some
> suggestions as to how you can help out:
> 
> 1) READ and learn about how NM actually works, and realize that this
> thread is full of misinformation. Then, contribute code to NM to make
> it do what you want.

Have you contributed any code to NM?

Actually, I have communicated with the developers of orinoco_cs and NM,
on several occasions.
The communication has been perfectly polite,
but the upshot has been that both believe 
the other should change their code.

> 2) Package other alternatives for Fedora which do fit your needs. You
> might think about packaging the following tools:
> 
> etcnet: http://etcnet.org/ "/etc/net represents a new approach to
> Linux network configuration
> tasks."
> 
> wicd: http://wicd.sourceforge.net/ "a wired and wireless network
> manager for Linux"
> 
> ifupdown and related gui utilities from Debian.

Personally, I don't think yet another WiFi program is needed.
I think the current system needs to be sorted out.
Basically, system-config-network and its GUI front-ends
should be improved so that they work as advertised.

And I don't think NM should be made a standard part of Fedora
unless and until it modifies its aims,
so that it works with as many WiFi devices as possible.

When I use NM on one laptop I get the error message "Use another card".
Since the card works perfectly without NM I find this message annoying.