Re: network-manager as default? No! (was: Bits from the Release Team - Kicking off Wheezy)

[Stanislav Maslovski <stanislav.maslovski@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 03, 2011 at 11:26:20PM +0530, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le dimanche 03 avril 2011 à 21:32 +0400, Stanislav Maslovski a écrit : 
> > Analogously, when I see such "great" technical suggestions as
> > replacing ifupdown on default installs with network-manager, I can't
> > help thinking (and sometimes commenting) that if this trend continues,
> > then at some point in future I may face a painful decision to abandon
> > the distribution that I continuously used for more than a decade and
> > to which I contributed.
> 
> May I suggest that you install a squeeze system with the desktop task,
> with a simple DHCP network configuration?

Why on earth would I do that? It does not match my needs at all. For
instance, this laptop sometimes connects to a couple of remote LANs
through VPNs, so that I have to set up routing in a not completely
trivial manner. On another site where I sometimes work, there is an
IPX network to which I have to connect to access the fileserver.
Occasionaly, I have to run another OS in a virtual machine on this
laptop for which I set up a bridge, etc.

I am not even mentioning any servers, as it is obvious that
network-manager is a "no-no" for them.

> You will see that your network is no longer managed by ifupdown. So
> we’re talking about something that has partly already happened, and
> AFAICT the world hasn’t fallen apart.

Well, I can only feel pity for the users who fell into this trap. Do
you know what is the first advise that is given to those users when
they eventually run into a problem with their network?

Right, deinstal network-manager!

> So far your only contribution to the discussion has been “If this
> happens, I will use another distribution.” Fine.

That is not exactly true, while I understand that certain people
prefer to see it like this.

> But could you explain why we would care? I should probably remind you
> that Debian is, at first, a do-o-cracy, so if you’re not interested
> into fixing things yourself

Yes, I usually fix bugs myself when I need it, if you mean this.
Try googling "Stanislav Maslovski +patch".

> or at least giving constructive criticism

If you read my mails without a prejudice you will notice it.

> please let other people dream of other technical solutions that they
> might actually end up improving the state of our network stack (which
> is, in case you haven’t noticed, absolutely disastrous).

If you mean the ifupdown-based configuration, then I cannot agree that
it is "really disastrous" (I would agree that the network-manager
approach is really disastrous, however) as at least in my cases (which
are not so trivial) ifupdown works okay (and if not then at least I
would know ways how to workaround problems).

-- 
Stanislav