Wireless newbies -- just try NetworkManager!

[Timothy Murphy]

John W. Linville wrote:

>> > Please, as the first step in trying to get wireless working on Fedora,
>> > before you do anything else, please just try:
>> > 
>> > service NetworkManager start
>> > 
>> > Please note that I said to try that _first_.  Specifically, "first"
>> > does not mean "after I ran system-config-network" or "after I started
>> > wpa_supplicant" or even "after I tried to configure things manually".
>> > "First" means _first_.
>> 
>> Why?
>> What difference does it make if you try NM first or second?
> 
> Obviously you aren't reading other threads...

I've read many postings on WiFi.
Some say NM is working fine for them.
Others say NM is not working for them, but "service network" is.
Still others swear by wicd.

I'm afraid I would want a rational reason to prefer one over the other.

I have 7 WiFi devices.
Most work with NM, some do not.
The device I am using at this moment, an Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card
in a ThinkPad T43 running Fedora-8, does not work with NM, 
but does work with the standard network service.
(This is the default in Fedora-8, I think.)

> Quite often someone will create a mess trying all the hard ways to
> get wireless working before they try NetworkManager.  Too often they
> don't clean-up after their failed attempts, resulting in a nightmare
> of conflicting wireless configuration options all trying to control
> the wireless device at the same time.

You are saying, as far as I can see,
that some files created by other WiFi applications,
will interfere with NM.
Which files?
I'd prefer to be told exactly what needs to be "cleaned up"
before one uses NM.
It seems to me that this should be laid down in the NM documentation.

To me, one of the great advantages of Linux over Windows
is that everything in Linux is - or should be - transparent.
Hopefully, an application will work "out of the box".
But if it doesn't, and one has enough time,
one can find exactly where it broke down.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland