KDE Network Manager in Intrepid is a huge step backwards!

[Adam Porter]

I'm running the Kubuntu 8.10 amd64 beta LiveCD. I have Kubuntu 8.04 on my hard disk and use it as my daily OS. I can say without a doubt that the Network Manager applet in Intrepid is a giant step backwards! Let me see here:

When I right-click the icon in the tray, instead of getting a list of wireless networks that are available, I get "eth0: no carrier" in big bold letters, and "wlan0" below that, and "New connection" below that. If I click on "New connection" I still don't see a list of wireless networks, only "eth0" and "wlan0", terms which are completely meaningless to the average user. If I click "wlan0" I finally get a list of wireless networks, but they open in a new window, which wastes more of my time and attention. If I then choose my personal WPA2-secured network and click "Connect and Save", Network Manager closes that window and tries to connect, but fails of course, because it never asked me for the passphrase! So if I then (pretending to be a new user) manage to figure out how to open the options for the newly-chosen wifi network, when I click Next enough times and get to the security page of the wizard (argh, wizards were decried years ago as poor usability!), it hasn't even automatically chosen to enable WPA2, or security at all. I have to choose to turn on security, and then make a blind guess at which type to use.

In Kubuntu Hardy 8.04, when I right-click the Network Manager tray icon, I get a simple list of available networks. If I click one, it starts connecting to it, and if necessary, asks me for the passphrase, already using the right kind of encryption. It doesn't hit me with "ETH0: NO CARRIER" in big letters, and it doesn't make me jump through invisible hoops to get connected to a wireless network. It's simple, and it just works, like it should.

Is this going to be released as THE Kubuntu 8.10? If so, it's going to be a dismal shooting-in-the-foot for Kubuntu's reputation, and will hurt KDE4's as well. Why has Network Manager regressed and devolved? NM 0.6.7's interface just needed some enhancing and refining, but this one is...unbelievable.

[Dalton (daltux)]

I agree and I see another problem. I can only connect by dynamic IP (DHCP) with it, because when I set the IP, netmask, gateway, DNS server, it does not even try to connect. I've a WPA wi-fi network.

[kforum (euro-fix)]

lets not cease to mention the fact that so far, its not very functional for many people.
besides the horrid interface of course...

[Christian González (droetker)]

Today I recognized the update: KDE uses the Gnome Network manager.
It looks nice with the gtk-qt4-engine. At the first moment I thought - wow - Kubuntu has a new KNetworkmanager - and it looks good, and integrates into the surface.

I happily tried to connect to a WLAN network, was asked for the password (cool, just WPA/WPA2 for selection - it detected it right - like in Gnome... KDE has learnt!)
BAM. And then It tried to save this password in the Gnome keyring.
This is not possible.

Besides the crashes of the widgets (analog clock), the 5-minutes-crashes of skim and the crappy graphics distortions when menus are "fading in", and the missing kontact icon - besides that it has no working network manager?
I really am a very deep-hearted KDE fanboy - but this is FAR away from being good software.
I don't speak of the technology behind it - Qt, plasmoids, SVGs etc. are awesome.
But it seems the way Ubuntu is treating KDE looks like - let's make them switch to Gnome.

First concept: software must work.
Secondly it should have glitter and fadein/out and thingies.

A Gnome network manager that can't cope with KWallet is inacceptable, correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, I am angry.

[Johan Venter (johan-venter)]

Agreed, the old version was much better. Please can we have the scanned list of wireless networks back in the right click menu of the system tray icon.

That being said, is it that the functionality was removed on purpose? Or is there a bug preventing it from happening?

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Who knows, we were forced to upgrade to an unstable svn snapshot of network-manager-kde since knetworkmanager 0.6.x doesn't work with network-manager 0.7.x, and upstream hasn't released the new one for 0.7, which makes sense since knetworkmanager is developed by OpenSuSE, and they don't need a working knetworkmanager for a few months at least before they release the next OpenSuSE.

This regression of features is the result of a bit of bad luck/timing, and things should be much better in Jaunty.
There's also a very good possibility that KDE 4.2 packages provided for Intrepid will include the new applet, since it is on the feature plan for KDE 4.2.
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.2_Feature_Plan

[Miloš Mandarić (mandzo18)]

network-manager-gnome solved my problems. At least until somebody fix knetworkmanager

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

A real KDE4 networkmanager frontend will be available for Kubuntu 9.04 by default, which should solve many of the issues caused by the half-baked KDE3 KNetworkManager 0.7 release that was used in Kubuntu 8.10.

[Whirlygig (junkmail2006)]

It's terrific that a fix has been released, but NetworkManager won't let me connect to the Internet, -not even using an ethernet cable. (!!!) So I won't be able to get the fix unless I get out of Kubuntu. It's a real katch 22.