John W. Linville wrote:
>> 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.
>
> ...which has nothing to do whatsoever with which one you should
> try first...
>
>> I'm afraid I would want a rational reason to prefer one over the other.
>
> How about "because NM does the right thing for most people most of
> the time with minimal effort (as long as you don't get in it's way)"?
I'd need some statistics to back up your belief that NM works
for more people than eg system-config-network.
Have you actually asked anyone? Or do you just know?
> Or "because I'm the person that will get your bugzilla, so please
> just do as I ask?"
That seems to me completely contrary to the spirit of Linux.
Even Windows doesn't say things like that to me,
though it sometimes acts as though it had.
Incidentally, you gave the following, more rational, reason before.
>> 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.
>
> Well now I guess that depends on which ones you tried, whether or not
> you left them running, and how badly you mangled your configuration.
> How am I to know these things?
>
> FWIW, the most likely culprits are running the wpa_supplicant service
> (i.e. "service wpa_supplicant start" or "chkconfig wpa_supplicant
> on") and/or not specifying "ONBOOT=no" for wireless devices when
> using system-config-network.
Surely the rational advice in such a case should be something like,
"Make sure you are not running the wpa_supplicant service",
with a brief account of how you can tell ("chkconfig --list").
Equally, if system-config-network actually writes "ONBOOT=no"
in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<if>
then you could simply say "Make sure ... has ONBOOT=yes".
> If you can figure things out, then do things your own way. If you
> want my help, then please do as I ask. I really don't see how this
> is controversial or why you seem to have taken offense.
I'm not actually asking for your help.
I would like to figure things out,
But nothing you have said in this thread has helped me to do that,
ie to understand WiFi under Fedora.
I don't think a wizard that works most of the time for most people
is really the Linux way.
Hopefully, a WiFi application should help one not only to connect
but also to understand what is happening.
Isn't that really the difference between the Linux philosophy
and Windows?
--
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
