What is the matter with fedora 9? ... Network Manager rocks !

[Andrea Mastellone]

Stephen Berg (Contractor) wrote:
>>>
>>> it introduced a NetworkManager which prohibits networking.
>>
>> NetworkMangler has been around since FC6 (at least), by making it the 
>> default it became impossible to ignore. It does the right thing in 
>> cases where you have one hardwire or wireless connection which can see 
>> only one AP. For all other cases wait for the human readable 
>> documentation which will be here... or maybe not, since it was coming 
>> with FC7, 8, and 9.
>>
> After about a dozen installs of Fedora 9 I cannot agree with you on 
> that.  On every system save one there is only one network connection, in 
> each of those cases it's been /dev/eth0 and NM would not enable the 
> connection by default.
> Maybe there's documentation on the way that will make NM a breeze to 
> configure but until that time it's out the window.  I disable the 
> NetworkManager service and enable the network service during kickstart 
> installs.  All my systems have a statically leased DHCP address and it 
> works just fine.
> Bottom line for me:  NM breaks far more than it fixes.
> 

My NM esperience is instead absolutely positive. I have tryed it since 
F7, but at that time I was very disappointed and turned it off, as in 
F8. In F9 I just wanted to give last chance and NM won.

I have a very standard hardware: Realtek RTL-8139 (wired) and Intel 
2200BG (wireless), perhaps this is a key ingredient.

It connects virtually to everything: I tested it over wireless 
connections (free, wep, wpa, wpa2), and wired ones, sometimes PPP over a 
modem. Some connections require manual IP settings, that I have 
configured in NM by editing the connections: all of them work flawlessly.

I have noticed only a bug (due to wpa_supplicant, namely): while 
connecting to a wireless network with a hidden essid, sometimes the 
connection attempts fail and I have to restart NM service in order to 
get a successful connection. After the wpa_supplicant today update, that 
problem is fixed and NM is a charm.

The only criticism is about the documentation: is very lacking at this 
stage.

My 2 cents.

Andrea