On 11/11/2007, Charles Curley <charlescurley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 09:37:28PM +0000, Timothy Murphy 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. 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. 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. Really, bitching about what the current options can't do isn't going to get you anywhere, it's just a waste of time and energy. Filing bugzillas, and thoughtful RFEs once you understand the problem domain is much more helpful than filling this list with negativity. Spend the time to learn a new skill (eg. packaging for Fedora, or writing code) and contribute to the project.
