NetworkManagement, was Re: Task Proposal: base system working Mer setup

[Lamarque V. Souza]

Em Friday 20 January 2012, Thomas Pfeiffer escreveu:
> > Taking a step back, I don't think that all of this is necessary for
> 
> something
> 
> > that has a fairly simple role. Basically, all you need to do is choose a
> > network to connect to, and possibly provide a password. Forgetting a
> 
> known
> 
> > connection would be needed, and possibly means to share your connection.
> > This
> > would likely cover 99% of all likely usecases.
> 
> +1.
> People want to get their device online with as few steps as possible, and
> that's it.
> The current conman UI actually does a pretty good job at that, apart from
> the
> missing 3G, so not much more than that is needed.
> The whole Plasma NM complexity is too much for 99% of mobile users.

	I do not see big differences in the connman UI and the plasmoid in 
Plasma NM's master, except that the plasmoid is not finished yet. Most of the 
time someone complaim about Plasma NM's complex options they talk about the 
kcm. I can just drop the kcm and then both will be on par and I could even 
remove the "Settings..." button in the plasmoid, that would make it more 
similar to the connman's UI. Removing options is easy, everybody knows that.

	Currently, also true for nm09 branch, the kcm is not required at all for 
common usage of wifi connections, NM creates a default wired connection so the 
kcm also not required here (for common usage), and the Mobile Connection 
Wizard allows to create 3G connections without the kcm. Only VPN, DSL and 
shared connections still require it and I plan to implement a different dialog 
in QGraphicsWidget to configure them or at least to call the current QWidget 
configuration dialogs without the kcm. The kcm is going to be used only for 
advanced options, not common usage.

	But the situation in Plasma NM is not going to change that much without 
more help. We need patches, patches. I hope this task proposal changes the 
current Plasma NM's situation.
 
> > Anything more complex than the above can easily be delegated to the
> 
> existing
> 
> > UI, using a KCM or whatever.
> 
> +1. VPN for example is not necessary at all for the vast majority of
> users,
> but is mission critical for many business users. So we should offer it,
> but not
> invest too much work in it.

	That's contraditory. VPN is not as simple as wifi, well, not counting 
WPA2 Enterprise wifi. There is no way to do not invest too much work in it.

	Taking into account that NetworkManager's API does things differently 
for VPN connections also makes them not as simple to handle like other 
connection types, which forced me and the other Plasma NM developers before me 
to implement specific code for them. Still there are missing VPN features for 
this same reason.

-- 
Lamarque V. Souza
KDE's Network Management maintainer
http://planetkde.org/pt-br
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