Just to add some more pennies to the thread, I'd like to add my recent experiences with fedora 8 and slack 12.

Fedora 7 had network-manager and it worked well. However, in fedora 8 it is badly broken and for me it doesn't work with any encryption methods. I resorted to using wicd instead, a simpler python program that works fine.

Upon installing slackware again as a dual boot, I was at first worried about connecting to my house WEP network, so I tried installing wicd, but the gui doesn't want to work. So, I investigated the config files, edited one, ran an rc script and within 2 seconds saw the message "your ip address is ...". I didn't believe it could actually have worked so quickly and simmply. but it did.

Now all I've got to do is get WPA-Enterprise working too...

Try wicd
It's a network manager for Slackware
See:
http://slackbuilds.org/result/?searc...anager&sv=12.1

Since getting a wireless network card (and getting into wireless networks) I've used wpa_supplicant on Slackware and after the initial configuration using it has been pretty much painless. Configuring wpa_supplicant wasn't exactly difficult, but did take some time at first with a Broadcom card and ndiswrapper (before the native kernel module and fwcutter). However I think those who choose Slackware instead of, say, Fedora are already geared towards making some configuration changes themselves (directly into the configuration files) rather than always using point-and-click along with graphical-only tools. I don't carry my Slackware-loaded computer around, so I don't need to worry about wireless hotspots, but from what I've read wpa_supplicant should be capable of doing that sort of roaming too..so there you go, automation

On the other hand I use Ubuntu too, which means I'm using the NetworkManager (through nm-applet) with wireless networks. Works like a charm, and this new 0.7 version fixed an issue I had with older versions, so in short I like it very much -- eases up life. It needs to be configured (fill in passwords, perhaps keyring password, ...) at first just like wpa_supplicant, and after that you can pretty much forget it. But since it's so easy to use (partly because of that, at least) I have absolutely no idea how, or if it's even possible, to configure it if I don't happen to have X running, which is bad. I can't rely on having X at hand always, and sometimes I don't even want to run it -- but still need to get connected. I assume it can be configured/used even without X, but have no idea how to do it; that means it would take time to study the thing, which is exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to be (a thing so easy that you don't need to learn to configure). On the other hand wpa_supplicant is fairly straightforward to configure and once it's done, can be used directly, trough scripts, in command line or by clicking a nice icon on a graphical desktop ("icon" => script, launcher, link, ...)

So even though I absolutely agree that it's good to have options and that things shouldn't be so darn hard for a beginner, I think wpa_supplicant fits into Slackware way better than NetworkManager (even before we start to talk about dependencies, installation etc.) If you cared to take the time and install Slackware, configure the system and still used it, how come you woulnd't take the time to configure wpa_supplicant (or just install one of the fancy graphical KDE apps for that matter, if you liked KDE)?

Hello Everybody,

I want to point out that developing a package for NetworkManager is in fact very Slackware-like.

Slackware's approach has no problem with using GUIs or other methods to accomplish tasks without reverting to the command-line. From my experience with using Slackware, it is not as much interested in creating a specific operating system as is it in creating a structured base in which open source projects can be be used.

That is actually part of the beauty of Slackware. It completely understands its place in the Linux community as a distribution of open source projects and does not try to become yet another convoluted and bloated operating system, with buggy GUIs and non-standard overbearing packaging and directory structures, as some other Linux flavors turned into.

Accordingly, Slackware will not go out of its way to create GUIs and other niceties if they don't exist already in the Linux community. However, if a GUI is developed for network management or other applications (phpmyadmin, for example), there is nothing philosophically wrong with implementing it into Slackware.

Murdock