This is just my personal experience. I hope this info will help others.


background situation:
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I installed Fedora 12 i686 with XFCE (no KDE and no GNOME). I noticed that I couldn't configure my wireless to use WPA through NetworkManager. Google said I needed nm-applet and Google said nm-applet is supplied by the package NetworkManager-gnome.


what I did:
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1. become root user (I ran the su command on the terminal)
2. checked if I had nm-applet installed and also checked if I had installed the package NetworkManager-gnome
3. found out I had neither on my system, so I installed the package NetworkManager-gnome
4. rebooted the computer
5. notice the netwok icon of the NetworkManager appear on my desktop (in my case, it appeared between the volume and the trash icons - bottom right corner of desktop)
6. right clicked on network icon, supplied my wireless network information such as SSID, encryption type (WPA), and WPA password
7. got wireless up and running


hints: (do the commands below as root user)
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1. to check to see if nm-applet is installed
You can do
[root@ ~]# which nm-applet

2. to check if NetworkManager-gnome is installed, there are other ways, but one way is just run
[root@ ~]# yum list NetworkManager-gnome

here is a case where NetworkManager-gnome is installed - notice the words "Installed Packages"
[root@ ~]# yum list NetworkManager-gnome
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Installed Packages
NetworkManager-gnome.i686

3. to install the NetworkManager-gnome package, first do a yum search and then a yum install
[root@ ~]# yum search NetworkManager-gnome
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
======================================================= Matched: NetworkManager-gnome ========================================================
NetworkManager-gnome.i686 : GNOME applications for use with NetworkManager
kde-plasma-networkmanagement.i686 : NetworkManager KDE 4 integration
knetworkmanager.i686 : NetworkManager KDE 4 integration
knetworkmanager-openvpn.i686 : OpenVPN support for knetworkmanager
knetworkmanager-vpnc.i686 : Vpnc support for knetworkmanager

[root@ ~]# yum install NetworkManager-gnome.i686