Some clarifications about Plasma NM usage

I was reading this blog post and felt that I had to explain some things to Plasma NM users. Firstly, the easiest way to add a wifi connection is by clicking on the tray icon, then on the connection name, fill in the encryption key (if necessary) and click Ok. Three clicks, the same number as MacOS like the other blog's owner described.

When you click on the tray icon and there is no wifi connection configured the "Show More" button is automatically toggled:

Clicking on my home network:

Writing encryption key and set it to connect automatically:

And after clicking on Ok button:

Here you can see that the "Show More" button is not toggled anymore because now there is a wifi connection configured. This is done to prevent the connection list to be crowed. You can always list all APs available by clicking on the "Show More" button.

One obvious problem in the connection list is that it is not sorted in any way. I already tried to solve this problem but I will have to refactor some internal classes before I can implement it efficiently. Toggling the connection list is CPU intensive because the way it is implemented.

Quoting same statements from the other blog:

"You connect not by clicking on an available network, you do it by clicking network manager."

This is not true, you can click on the available network too. The bug that prevent it from working was fixed three months ago. What must be your problem is that your distribution, OpenSuse, includes a very old Plasma NM snapshot from November of last year in OpenSuse 11.4. There have been dozens of bugs solved since then, including that one. If you want to use a more up to date Plasma you must upgrade your OpenSuse packages or compile Plasma NM by yourself. Honestly I prefer to compile it, it is easy and even today OpenSuse and other distributions are a bit slow to catch up with all the bugfixing that is going on in Plasma NM. For instance, the packages in the link above are more than two months old now, if you take into account there have been two KDE SC releases during that period that is a bit old.

If you want to compile Plasma NM by yourself do the following:

1. install git, make, g++, cmake, qt devel libs, kdelibs devel, kde-workspace devel, NetworkManager devel and their dependencies.
2. Execute: git clone git://anongit.kde.org/networkmanagement.git
3. mkdir networkmanagement/build
4. cd networkmanagement/build
5. cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
6. make
7. make install
8. That is it.

If you want to use the NM-0.9 execute 'git checkout nm09' before step #5.

"Later, to finish the process, I need to hit OK a couple of times and then I get back to the desktop. But I am not connected yet. I need to go back to the Wireless icon on the system tray and now I am able to see the new connection I added through the prior steps. Once I click on it, the setup will finally end by connecting to the wireless network."

You did not checked the "Connect automatically" checkbox. NetworkManager will not connect automatically without that. I wrote NetworkManager because it is NetworkManager daemon and not Plasma NM (nor nm-applet) that triggers the auto-connection process. Only the manual connection process is triggered by NM's clients (Plasma NM, nm-applet, etc). Some people have already complained about the connection editing process, but I do not plan to change it anytime soon.

One user commented in the other blog: "I also still have problems with knetworkmanager/plasmoid, mostly because of creating new connections. for example I am still unable to create "system connections", because that checkbox is greyed out, and there is no possibility (perhaps except login as root) to activate it."

This is not a Plasma NM bug, it is your distribution that disabled "system connection" checkbox. We have nothing to do with it. Ubuntu is one distribution I know that does disable the "system connection" checkbox.

Another user mentioned the fact that kwallet asks for password to open it. Well, you can disable kwallet's password and that is it. But what would be cool is if kwallet is opened when user logs in kdm. Well, someone is working it: KDE bug about single sign-on. Unfortunately things are too calm in that bug entry. I hope the guy that has been working on that bug has not given up.

Another problem we from Plasma NM face is the fact the NetworkManager specification lacks some details that are crutial to make things work properly, specially with VPN. NetworkManager thoroughly tests all connection parameters and invalidades the connection if one check fails. The problem is that there is no documentation about the tests. The only way we can know for sure which setting is allowed in a connection is reading NetworkManager's source code, which is not easy to read. After several times having to resort to reading NM's source code I can say I am getting used to it. Two weeks ago I even sent a patch to NM mailing list to partially fix this nasty bug. Now I just need NetworkManager's maintainers to apply the patch or improve it and finally fix the problem that prevents Plasma NM nm09 to change connection secrets (encrpytion keys, passwords, etc). We follow NM-0.9's specification but it seems NM daemon does not when it calls the secret agent to save the old secrets instead of the new ones. If you are wondering why this problem does not happen with nm-applet, I also would like to know why. The fact that nm-applet and NetworkManager share the same developers makes things easier for nm-applet, of course.

Plasma NM still have several bugs to fix and features to implement. We are working on them when possible, some are more easier to fix so they are being fixed first. From time to time we implement a new feature in the nm09 branch, if it is easy to backport it we backport it to master, where NM-0.8 code is. I know, we need to move the NM-0.8 code from master to a nm08 branch, someday we are going to do it.

By the way, last Wednesday was my anniversary :-D in the International day of Rock, oh yeah!!! hehe.