Re: Back to technical discussion? Yes! (was: network-manager as default? No!)
On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 05:35:10PM +0530, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le lundi 04 avril 2011 à 11:55 +0400, Stanislav Maslovski a écrit :
> > Well, actually configuring a wireless network with wpa_supplicant and
> > ifupdown is not hard at all and does not require too much time, _if_ a
> > user has developed a good habbit of reading documentation first.
>
> It seems to be a common belief between some developers that users should
> have to read dozens of pages of documentation before attempting to do
> anything.
>
> I’m happy that not all of us share this elitist view of software. I
> thought we were building the Universal Operating System, not the
> Operating System for bearded gurus.
I do not think that reading documentation before trying to achieve
something is that elitist. And in the case of wpa_supplicant, it is
definitely not dozens of pages. Basically, it is just
man interfaces
man wpa_supplicant.conf
zless /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/README.Debian.gz
(and for most cases just reading that README.Debian should be enough)
> > It is also preferable in that sense that you configure it once and it
> > works for years, surviving upgrades, etc. So in the end you conserve
> > your time, and not loose your time.
>
> Do you even know in what kind of contexts a laptop with wireless
> connection is actually used? Because from your sentence it looks like
> you live in a different world.
Perhaps, I do. I travel quite a lot, so I use my laptop in airports,
libraries, hotels, etc.
The wireless networks in public locations are usually open and do not
require any specific configuration; the most of them are catched with
a simple roaming setup outlined in that README from above, supplanted
with a default /e/n/interfaces stanza for DHCP-based networks. If one
instead prefers using a GUI, then there is wpa_gui with which one may
scan for networks, select the needed one, change parameters, etc.
I also use wireless at home and at the sites where I work. For these
locations I have several fixed stanzas in /e/n/interfaces and in
wpa_supplicant.conf that I do not need to touch at all.
--
Stanislav
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