On Monday, April 09, 2012 01:02:00 PM Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
> As I say,
> people who come up with this stuff do not think beyound "it works on my laptop".

In 2004, when NetworkManager first came on the scene, the opposite was true, where any network connectivity required either distribution-specific tools or text editing of config files, regardless of network technology.  While NM is desktop-centric (not laptop-centric, incidentally) it works fine for me for a number of servers, a number of desktop workstations (not laptops), as well as for a handful of laptops.  It's not hard; and if the mouse walks you can't use the older system-config-network GUI either.  As Pat mentions, nmcli works to do network startup by connection name.  There is a somewhat experimental cli networkmanager configurator called 'cnetworkmanager' it isn't yet complete.

It isn't as buggy as it used to be, and it is being developed by people who aren't just saying that it works on their laptop.

> Yes, obviously you want this for the unusual case where you have more than one network
> insterface and they all connect to different networks. For the more common case
> where there is only one network, the SL installer installs an unwelcome time bomb.

All of my servers connect to multiple networks.  One of my servers connects to fifteen networks, through a combination of technologies.

Wireless connections on a server can be useful...... and wireless on the desktop in certain locations (using high-gain antennas) is just about required for some use cases.