[PLUG] Network issues

chris (fool) mccraw gently at gmail.com
Mon Apr 20 20:35:20 UTC 2009


On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 13:29, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

> Network Manager has always been a PITA. I went to wicd because the NM
> GUI could never find any of the available networks. Maybe once in a
> while it would drop down a list. Usually I had to go to the command
> line to scan and then connect. Moreover, NM requires you to "unlock" it
> before you can do anything. It's time consuming and I don't need that
> much security.

weird, that unlocky-bit must be a gnome-ism (or something).  it does
not do that in xubuntu 8.10 where i am always logged in as a
nonprivileged user.  it "just works".


> Saturday I burned the release candidate of Jaunty and when I was at the
> Clinic the next day I booted it up live. Even though Free Geek had
> ethernet cables all over the table, I did not plug one in. As soon as
> Jaunty was running I noticed an icon in the Gnome panel that looked
> like a network icon with bars. It had a red X on it. I clicked on it
> and down dropped a list of all available wireless networks, complete
> with a percentage for signal strength. I selected Free Geek and in a
> matter of ten seconds I was connected. I stayed connected without a
> problem for the next four hours. I'm thinking that some serious work
> went into NM between Intrepid and Jaunty.

could be.  i have to admit that i have had to do the manually-scan
thing usually, though yesterday in the park it "just worked", telling
me there were a bunch of available new-to-it networks for the first
time ever.


> If you want a simple GUI for network connections I recommend wicd. It
> served me well for a couple of years. And if NM turns out to be still
> broken after the dist-upgrade on Thursday, I will reinstall it for sure.

wicd will definitely be my fallback if nm ever fails me (hopefully not
while i'm out of range of another network!)

if i were smart, i'd just install it now just so it'd be on the laptop
already...



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