I just got my laptop back (I had to resinstall Win7 on it to do use 2011 Turbotax; the 2012 edition actually runs in VirtualBox); installed Slackware 14.0 64-bit, works fine, bye-bye winders.

My LAN is all fixed IP (CAT-6 cables) but the time is going to come (like tomorrow) that the laptop is going bye-bye truck to that land of Wi-Fi (there's no Wi-Fi where I live, I'm on Hughesnet satellite, no cable, no cell phone, dial-up on a land line if everything else craps out).

So, I'm wondering about just how much hassle networkmanager is going to be; as in, am I going to have to screw around for hours to get the thing to talk to an access point? Or does it more or less just work if I start up the networkmanager at boot? Or should I just install WICD and be done with it?

It's easy enough to just run netconf and change it to DHCP (done that before and it worked with WICD) or should I bite the bullet and configure DHCP on the thing so my other servers can find it on the LAN or is there some other magic I need to know about?

This is an annual thing, heading from where I live to the Big City (where you're swamped with access points). Just wondering if the New Thing is better than the Old Thing and how much screwing around is required.

Not complainin', just wondering, thanks.

Wicd should work fine. Even wpa_gui should be easy enough to use.

To my experience, NetworkManager maintains connection a bit better than wicd only when the WiFi signal is very low. But when my network setup is a little more complex than the simplest possible (one network interface, all defaults, dhcp), NetworkManager makes things much much more complex even than the primitive command line way. It stands in every possible way of user customization.

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Thanks for that, think I'll just stick with WICD for the extremely limited use I have for any Wi-Fi connections.

I did look though /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager and it look like it's wholly dedicated to Wi-Fi where I have cables connected 99-44/100% of the time. Gosh, I think I'm going to be left behind without all the magical mystical new hardware that can't be plugged into a router or switch. Sigh.

Thanks again and best wishes for the holidays.

networkmanager works a treat without any hassles.

You just need to include "nm-applet &" in the startup file when you login as user.

I have wireless and ethernet on my laptop. If I plug in the ethernet cable then networkmanager automatically switches over to ethernet. Unplug it and it automatically switches back to the wireless interface. Simply right-click on the nm icon if you want to set up a new interface.

From comments I have read here in the past, it seems that networkmanager works better than wicd but there is no problem in having both. Simply use
"chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.wicd" if you want to use networkmanager and
"chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.wicd" if you would rather have wicd.

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Thanks for that -- I'll keep in mind.