NetworkManager 0.7.1 Brings Linux Network Love

[Hephasteus]

Ya getting dozens and dozens of network devices and topologies and everything all working in one system without much vendor support isn't like hard or anything is it?

[drag]

Network Manager is a shitload better then anything I've ever seen or used in Windows and it is better then what I've personally experienced in OS X.

I mean seriously... if you look at the utter clusterfuck that is Windows wireless and then tell me that Network-Manager sucks then you just have no clue what your talking about.

Seriously. Can anybody here dogging on Network-Manager can even tell me what Network Manager's dispatcher is for??

(Becuase if they did then they would never have a issue with say... something as simple as configuring a ipsec tunnel to work with NM)

And you all are complaining about wired network support?! Hell it's always had perfect ability to aquire a DHCP address, even in it's shitty-as-fuck early days.

As far as static IP address...
A. If your trying to use network manager on a server your a moron. It's a 'NETWORK' 'MANAGER'. It's designed to manage connecting to networks. Networks as in plural networks, multiple networks, networks that you connect to as more then one, as in something you don't do with a server.

B. If your on a network with no DHCP server then:
1. Let the autoconfig stuff work so that the system will automatically give itself a ip address and just automagically work with other self-addressing machines on your network.
or
2. Use the existing functionality in each and every single linux distribution out there and configure the network interface with a static IP address. Same way it's been done for centuries.

And if Network Manager tries to fight that configuration, file a bug. With the Linux distributions I use Network-manager completely fucks-off when I configure a static configuration.

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Oh. And for the record, Network Manager is perfectly capable of doing and remembering static configurations for both wireless and wired networks.


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Here is some examples of how much network manager 'sucks'


1. It automatically is able to not only allow me to join multiple wireless networks, but networks with different levels and different types of security.

2. It not only is able to do that, but it is able to remember the configuration and generate such configurations on the fly.

3. When I am running a VM in Network Manager the virtual ethernet switch for my virtual network of virtual machines are able to connect, on the fly, to the internet through any network interface I happen to be using at the time. It just 'goes'.

Why? How? Because NM works with the routing iptables for my VM and dynamically configures them for each network.

4. My 3G phone 'just works' with Linux.

It's worth noting that:

PPPD and chat scripts DO NOT work correctly with the phone. It _can_, but that puts my phone into 'gimp mode' with basically crippled network performance.

To tether my 3G phone I need to have something that communicates with a serial connection to do settings and configurations and then connect to the network using the virtual ethernet 'usb0' device.

This 'just works' with Network Manager. Zero configuration, no scripts, no fucking around with sniffing Windows ppp connections to figure out how to configure the stupid thing. It 'just works'.


5. Once connected to 3G or through local ethernet network I can setup my laptop as a wireless access point through the use of Ad-hoc network configurations.

It just takes a few clicks of the mouse and then I can share the connections with anybody around me.

Usefull for those 'off site' meetings used to get out of the office early.

6. I do not need to use a root account (either through su, logging in as root, or sudo) to use it.

Get that?

It _does_not_require_root_password_.

Instead the applet that I use interacts with the deamon through DBUS and access can be regulated and controlled via Policykit, if I so desired. (useful for corporate laptops).

This means that instead of having to open a terminal, or run a entire GUI program as root under my user account (as would happen with gksu or gksudo) I just can configure my machine to work with almost any network, on the fly, without passwords, in a very safe and secure manner.

This results in better security. Instead of having thousands of lines of code running as root under the control of my user account I have a single dbus connection from my user's bus to the systems bus.. a system which is much easier to monitor and harden against potential threats in a multiuser environment.


8. I can plug in a USB ethernet adapter or USB wireless adapters and have it 'just work' with Network Manager. No reconfiguring, no worrying about if something is going to show up as 'wlan0' or 'wlan1' or whatever. None of that. It _just_works_.

(oh, and same thing happens with PulseAudio and USB audio devices... I can even transfer sound from one device to another as the application is running with no fits or pauses.)

9. etc
10. etc
11. etc

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So ya. Network Manager is a huge half-baked pile of shit.

Only this pile of shit is more user friendly, better designed, easier to secure, has more capabilities, wider hardware support, and is easier to extend through simple if-up/if-down scripts, then any other mobile network management tool avialable for any other OS anywere.

I challenge you to tell me a single tool that comes remotely close to that.

Yes this pile of shit, with a single small applet interface in the systray, is is able to do more in Linux then a entire army of network configuration tools (each hardware-specific wireless manager shittier then the next) and dozens of screens of wizards in Windows and works with much more hardware, in more different circumnstatces then what is avialable in OS X..

Ya, go ask how well those OS X users that purchased Ralink devices like their little network tool...

So Network MAnager isn't perfect and isn't everything to everybody. Nothing is and nothing else comes as close. So stuff it. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing anybody to use it and it is trivially easy to disable in any Linux distributions if you know anything about how init scripts work and the related tools in your distros.

[deanjo]

Ya, go ask how well those OS X users that purchased Ralink devices like their little network tool...

Heh, I happen to know a lot of them (myself included) and never have heard a real complaint against it.

[DoDoENT]

@drag

I agree with every word you said. I've never had problems with Network Manager, and I really like it's simplicity of configuring networks.

But I miss the "Scan for WLAN" option. I _really_ miss it, because that forces me to scan for wifi in terminal. Yes, NM automatically scans for networks, but this happens too rare. It would be a really nice feature to be able to manually scan for networks.

I am sure that network manager daemon has this ability, because somehow applet must request the available network list from the daemon. So, applet should just have the button which will call the function for scanning for available networks. This function has to exist because applet calls it when it desires to scan for network. I think that implementing such button should take only 10 minutes for people who have experience in NM applet programming, but could ease the usage of NM a lot, especially to the Linux newbies.

[kraftman]

Heh, I happen to know a lot of them (myself included) and never have heard a real complaint against it.

However, Linux and Windows have much better wi-fi support then Macos.

[Hohlraum]

NM works fine here.

Why is everyone bashing open source projects all the time. If you have something to complain about, correct it yourself or startup a new project? Remember they are doing everything for free, so you can use it without paying anything.

Wait some time an NM will be better, I'm sure of that. Even if you don't help them out with current bugs ;-)

People don't bash projects enough. That's the problem.

Ever tried to add static routes through the 'routes' section of NM? It lets you enter them and then just throws them into the bit bucket.

Another thing that just _blows_ about NM is that its not designed to work at the OS level. Its designed to work on the desktop level. Take a look at the /etc/network/interfaces file on a server. Now take a look at it on a recent ubuntu desktop. Ridiculous.

[deanjo]

However, Linux and Windows have much better wi-fi support then Macos.

In what waysfor the average user? For 99% of the people out there OS X 's wifi is all they need. The #1 airport call to apple is why people can't leech of their neighbors wifi anymore and it keeps asking for a password when they try to connect to it. The answer is because your neighbor caught on and finally protected his wifi. #2 is environmental interference. #3 is trying to connect to a Linksys WRT-54g with old buggy firmware. It's extremely rare for apple to receive a call about relatively obscure setup issues.

[kraftman]

In what waysfor the average user? For 99% of the people out there OS X 's wifi is all they need. The #1 airport call to apple is why people can't leech of their neighbors wifi anymore and it keeps asking for a password when they try to connect to it. The answer is because your neighbor caught on and finally protected his wifi. #2 is environmental interference. #3 is trying to connect to a Linksys WRT-54g with old buggy firmware. It's extremely rare for apple to receive a call about relatively obscure setup issues.

I'm not interested if for 99% of the people out there Macose 's wifi is all they need. Maybe it's only for 10% people? You can't proof. It just doesn't have as good support as two other OS'es. #4 because Macos doesn't support some Wi-Fi cards or it just 'supports' them.

Your posts sound sometimes like marketing talk and Milton should be proud :P

[Dragonlord]

1. It automatically is able to not only allow me to join multiple wireless networks, but networks with different levels and different types of security.

No it can't. When you try to join another network it tears down all the others. Puts you into shit if you want to dynamically route through your box.

2. It not only is able to do that, but it is able to remember the configuration and generate such configurations on the fly.

Which I _do not want_! There are a couple of fucking moron APs in this house I'm in and my fucking list is cluttered full with those fucking shit APs and you _can't get rid of them_! Besides NM is not fucking able to remember my own AP because it's fucking HIDDEN! ( so much for _manual_ configuration you morons ).

3. When I am running a VM in Network Manager the virtual ethernet switch for my virtual network of virtual machines are able to connect, on the fly, to the internet through any network interface I happen to be using at the time. It just 'goes'.

It crashes the VM. If that's a great feature I'm Santa Clause.

So now a few more points.

1) OpenSwan is impossible to do with NM because you need root access to fire up the connection ( /etc/init.d/ipsec start requires root ). I therefore need to manually fire up the tunnel whenever I connect. Big shit since I have two different networks: at home I need IPSec as otherwise wifi denies access. At university I need no IPSec since it's using a fucking crapshit proprietary bull cisco crap VPN which doesn't work with anything else than Macs so you have to do some annoying Proxy dancing to get on the network. NM is incapable of doing either correctly.

2) Static IPs are NOT possible. I have a very specific network setup ( it's called security but NM knows shit about network security ) which requires certain network parameters to be static. NM is unable to properly do this since it just takes an IP and the rest it fucks up. With other words wired connection does not work through NM. I don't want to bull up a terminal to fix the mistakes and inabilities of NM. Especially not in such a fucking trivial job like doing a fucking static network connection. Hell damn it even Gentoo can do this using their network config tool on the install CD and NM with all the bells and whistles can't fucking do it? That's just bull... _BULL_!

What pisses me off on NM is that it falls prone to the FS-Disease. Don't implement fucking advanced stuff if you fail at the basic stuff. It just totally cripples your software and as such cripples Linux as a whole. People do not see what you _can_ do but where you _fail_ at. So stop feature-whore on your projects until you have fixed the fucking basics! That's the main problem with NM and it doesn't make it better that there is no better alternative.

Oh and bug reports you can smoke in a fucking crack pipe. It's not the first FS project I've seen where the devers give shits about bug reports if they don't fit their agenda. This is bullshit behavior and shows just that the devers are unable to do a proper project. Since I'm doing an FS project myself ( including a released one ) I am allowed to piss over other devers so don't come with the piss poor "stop whining" line. Ass licking won't change faulty apps.

Sorry for the big rant here but it pisses me off to see Linux dragged into the mud by crappy projects with those then moaning about people not liking Linux. It's your fucking fault!

[highlandsun]

Dragonlord: some of what you complain about is old news, NM 0.6 and older. E.g., NM 0.7 allows multiple networks to be active at once.

In a lot of ways I agree that they've fucked up the simple things. The fact that NM only works when logged in to the desktop really annoys me; I have gdm off by default and login to a text terminal. Their "system-settings" stuff has never worked for me. It's incredibly stupid (to me) that I have to fire up X before DNS will work, or before ntpdate can talk to a time server, because NM won't authenticate to the wifi before then.

But I've spent a lot of time on the NM mailing lists and inside the code, tweaking things to make it work better for me. That's the other point about free software - if the principal developers don't listen to my ideas, I can say "screw you" and continue to use it the way I want it...