Re: any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Lun 22 octobre 2007 11:36, Valent Turkovic a écrit :

>  Please make it on by default also for DVD install images. 
Till it works for all the systems Fedora targets (including those with
no permanent GUI session that also need network/wifi connexion) the
answer is no.

Right now NetworkManager is targetting a very small user niche, so
it's only usable as default in the spin dedicated to this niche (and
one could argue the spin desktop target audience is wider than the
laptop-only no-daemon dumbed-down desktop NetworkManager supports)

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Mike C]

Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot <at> laposte.net> writes:

>  
>  
>  Le Lun 22 octobre 2007 11:36, Valent Turkovic a écrit :
>  
>  > Please make it on by default also for DVD install images.
>  
>  Till it works for all the systems Fedora targets (including those with
>  no permanent GUI session that also need network/wifi connexion) the
>  answer is no. 
Having recently got wpa_supplicant working in F7 with ipw2200 and another
machine with iwl3945, I am now definitely a fan of wpa_supplicant as opposed to
NM. I can configure a machine to bring up a wireless connection at boot now and
it will connect either at home or at work - and that is ideal for a user that
wants to boot and then load a browser and work with the web or then do office
stuff. The many people who have made the in-kernel drivers, wpa_supplicant and
NM as well ought to be congratulated on getting this into a working state.
However there are further developments yet to be done - getting rt2x00 and ath5k
working would be another huge step forward.

Yes, I can configure the necessary admin side in the background but the
non-technical user sometimes would prefer not even to have to select a wireless
AP from the NM menu.

I have several family members who are F7 fans now but are definitely not
technical when it comes to installing or setting up the system.

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Valent Turkovic]

On 10/22/07, Mike C <mike.cohler(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot <at> laposte.net>
> writes:
>
>  >
>  >
>  > Le Lun 22 octobre 2007 11:36, Valent Turkovic a écrit :
>  >
>  > > Please make it on by default also for DVD install images.
>  >
>  > Till it works for all the systems Fedora targets (including those with
>  > no permanent GUI session that also need network/wifi connexion) the
>  > answer is no.
>
>  Having recently got wpa_supplicant working in F7 with ipw2200 and another
>  machine with iwl3945, I am now definitely a fan of wpa_supplicant as opposed to
>  NM. I can configure a machine to bring up a wireless connection at boot now and
>  it will connect either at home or at work - and that is ideal for a user that
>  wants to boot and then load a browser and work with the web or then do office
>  stuff. The many people who have made the in-kernel drivers, wpa_supplicant and
>  NM as well ought to be congratulated on getting this into a working state.
>  However there are further developments yet to be done - getting rt2x00 and ath5k
>  working would be another huge step forward. 
Can you give a little how-to or a link to resources you used to setup
wpa_supplicant to work at home and office?

>  Yes, I can configure the necessary admin side in the background but the
>  non-technical user sometimes would prefer not even to have to select a wireless
>  AP from the NM menu. 
My my family members I can see that choosing a network via some menue
(winxp or NM) is something they can handle but setting up a new
network connection for each one and then switching from one to other
is not in their domain...

>  I have several family members who are F7 fans now but are definitely
> not
>  technical when it comes to installing or setting up the system. 
Great!

-- 
http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 20:41 +0200, Valent Turkovic wrote:
>  On 10/22/07, Mike C <mike.cohler(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  > Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot <at> laposte.net> writes:
>  >
>  > >
>  > >
>  > > Le Lun 22 octobre 2007 11:36, Valent Turkovic a écrit :
>  > >
>  > > > Please make it on by default also for DVD install images.
>  > >
>  > > Till it works for all the systems Fedora targets (including those with
>  > > no permanent GUI session that also need network/wifi connexion) the
>  > > answer is no.
>  >
>  > Having recently got wpa_supplicant working in F7 with ipw2200 and another
>  > machine with iwl3945, I am now definitely a fan of wpa_supplicant as opposed to
>  > NM. I can configure a machine to bring up a wireless connection at boot now and
>  > it will connect either at home or at work - and that is ideal for a user that
>  > wants to boot and then load a browser and work with the web or then do office
>  > stuff. The many people who have made the in-kernel drivers, wpa_supplicant and
>  > NM as well ought to be congratulated on getting this into a working state.
>  > However there are further developments yet to be done - getting rt2x00 and ath5k
>  > working would be another huge step forward.
>  
>  Can you give a little how-to or a link to resources you used to setup
>  wpa_supplicant to work at home and office? 
Usually you specify multiple network blocks in the conf file and as long
as ap_scan=1 wpa_supplicant will pick the first one that it can match to
some scan results.

Dan

>  
>  >
>  > Yes, I can configure the necessary admin side in the background but the
>  > non-technical user sometimes would prefer not even to have to select a wireless
>  > AP from the NM menu.
>  
>  My my family members I can see that choosing a network via some menue
>  (winxp or NM) is something they can handle but setting up a new
>  network connection for each one and then switching from one to other
>  is not in their domain...
>  
>  > I have several family members who are F7 fans now but are definitely not
>  > technical when it comes to installing or setting up the system.
>  
>  Great!
>  
>  -- 
>  http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
>  linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
>  registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
>  ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic
>

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Valent Turkovic]

On 10/22/07, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  Le Lun 22 octobre 2007 11:36, Valent Turkovic a écrit :
>
>  > Please make it on by default also for DVD install images.
>
>  Till it works for all the systems Fedora targets (including those with
>  no permanent GUI session that also need network/wifi connexion) the
>  answer is no.
>
>  Right now NetworkManager is targetting a very small user niche, so
>  it's only usable as default in the spin dedicated to this niche (and
>  one could argue the spin desktop target audience is wider than the
>  laptop-only no-daemon dumbed-down desktop NetworkManager supports) 
Ok, I trust you have much more expertise with this topic.

Can I ask you (and all other fedora devels) one general question that
regards usability, desktop users and wireless...?

How do you expect average users who are new to linux and install
fedora from DVD to use wireless?

Is the NetworkManager only option (if they find it and start it in the
first place)? Are you making some fedora specific tool for easy
connectivity based on system-config-network?

Is using system-config-network only way of setting up and using
wireless network via gui in fedora?

Thank you for all of your comments,
Valent.

-- 
http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mardi 23 octobre 2007 à 22:30 +0200, Valent Turkovic a écrit :

>  Ok, I trust you have much more expertise with this topic. 
I don't have more expertise than being told time after time by the
NetworkManager guys that their stuff depended on a GNOME applet and that
it was not intended to work for systems that ran network-dependant
daemons or did network-dependant stuff outside the GUI session.

So it's not a general networking solution. Therefore it's not a suitable
default for the Fedora DVD version, which is supposed to be
general-purpose.

And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig this
particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the NetworkManager
team told us "we want to be the general Fedora networking solution, and
be enabled by default on more than the desktop spin".

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Jesse Keating]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 +0200
Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:

>  And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig
> this
>  particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the
>  NetworkManager team told us "we want to be the general Fedora
>  networking solution, and be enabled by default on more than the
>  desktop spin". 

That's the plan for F9, and why NM got a rewrite in F8.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- All my bits are free, are yours?

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 16:54 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 +0200
>  Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig this
>  > particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the
>  > NetworkManager team told us "we want to be the general Fedora
>  > networking solution, and be enabled by default on more than the
>  > desktop spin".
>  
>  
>  That's the plan for F9, and why NM got a rewrite in F8. 
Right; NM 0.7 and later is definitely _not_ targetted at a "very narrow
niche".  It's targeted at hopefully >= 75% of the use-cases of Fedora.

Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in general)
I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
allow connections to be brought up before you log in.  That's the only
real blocker to using NM in a GUI-less server-type environment if you
like.  Other than that, most of the bits for static IP support are in
(applet bits to follow), the options to lock things like 802.3 duplex,
speed, and other stuff are in-progress by Tambet, and most of the
wireless options work.  

By the holidays, I expect we can flip NM on by default in Rawhide, even
if it's not default in F8.

Dan

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 16:54:41 -0400,
  Jesse Keating <jkeating(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 +0200
>  Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig this
>  > particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the
>  > NetworkManager team told us "we want to be the general Fedora
>  > networking solution, and be enabled by default on more than the
>  > desktop spin".
>  
>  
>  That's the plan for F9, and why NM got a rewrite in F8. 
I was looking for information on NM yesterday and the information I saw
suggested that it was not intended to be a general network configuration
tool. But in fact seemed to be mostly suited for people who want to connect
to wireless networks opportunisticly and who use DHCP to get their wired
IP addresses. There was a statement that for static IP addresses it was
going to get that data from the network config scripts data.

Is there some roadmap documentation somewhere that suggests a more
ambitious plan?

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mardi 23 octobre 2007 à 16:54 -0400, Jesse Keating a écrit :
>  On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 +0200
>  Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig this
>  > particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the
>  > NetworkManager team told us "we want to be the general Fedora
>  > networking solution, and be enabled by default on more than the
>  > desktop spin".
>  
>  
>  That's the plan for F9, and why NM got a rewrite in F8. 
That's a very nice announce and hopefully will put an end to the
confusing networking state of Fedora. Many thanks to the NetworkManager
team! I hope we manage to get F9 out with a single unified networking
system shared by every Fedora spin.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Adam Huffman]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Dan Williams wrote:

>  Right; NM 0.7 and later is definitely _not_ targetted at a "very
> narrow
>  niche".  It's targeted at hopefully >= 75% of the use-cases of Fedora.
>  
>  Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in general)
>  I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
>  allow connections to be brought up before you log in.  That's the only
>  real blocker to using NM in a GUI-less server-type environment if you
>  like.  Other than that, most of the bits for static IP support are in
>  (applet bits to follow), the options to lock things like 802.3 duplex,
>  speed, and other stuff are in-progress by Tambet, and most of the
>  wireless options work.  
>  
>  By the holidays, I expect we can flip NM on by default in Rawhide, even
>  if it's not default in F8.
>   
A general comment re. NM.  It did seem odd the way such a large change
was made so late in the F8 development cycle, with no real discussion I
could see (please do point me to such a discussion if there was one).

For quite a long time it was unusable for lots of people and still seems
a little flaky.

Was it a case of the rewrite taking longer than planned?

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[David Nielsen]

tir, 23 10 2007 kl. 17:23 -0400, skrev Dan Williams:
>  On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 16:54 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  > On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:49:50 +0200
>  > Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt; wrote:
>  > 
>  > > And that sucks for you and Fedora in general but I didn't dig this
>  > > particular hole. I'd be the first delighted person if the
>  > > NetworkManager team told us "we want to be the general Fedora
>  > > networking solution, and be enabled by default on more than the
>  > > desktop spin".
>  > 
>  > 
>  > That's the plan for F9, and why NM got a rewrite in F8.
>  
>  Right; NM 0.7 and later is definitely _not_ targetted at a "very narrow
>  niche".  It's targeted at hopefully >= 75% of the use-cases of Fedora.
>  
>  Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in general)
>  I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
>  allow connections to be brought up before you log in.  That's the only
>  real blocker to using NM in a GUI-less server-type environment if you
>  like.  Other than that, most of the bits for static IP support are in
>  (applet bits to follow), the options to lock things like 802.3 duplex,
>  speed, and other stuff are in-progress by Tambet, and most of the
>  wireless options work.   
Excellent to hear, I'm looking forward to deploying this on my home
server. NM has gotten really stable for me over the past few days, so
I'm overall very pleased with things given that a solution for headless
setups is being worked on.

(un)related question, one problem I'm currently experiencing on all my
boxes that run NM is that ntp starts up before a network connection is
available. It's not a huge issue but it would be a nice thing to fix
down the line.

- David

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Jesse Keating]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:32:22 +0100
Adam Huffman <bloch(a)verdurin.com&gt; wrote:

>  A general comment re. NM.  It did seem odd the way such a large
> change
>  was made so late in the F8 development cycle, with no real discussion
>  I could see (please do point me to such a discussion if there was
>  one).
>  
>  For quite a long time it was unusable for lots of people and still
>  seems a little flaky.
>  
>  Was it a case of the rewrite taking longer than planned? 
This was discussed and tracked many times in FESCo meetings.  It was
deemed important enough to work through the delays and have the rewrite
for F8, leading to a on by default in F9.  Not the least of which if we
didn't use it, and say Ubuntu did before us, there is more thunder
stolen (:

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- All my bits are free, are yours?

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Gianluca Sforna]

On 10/23/07, Dan Williams <dcbw(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in
> general)
>  I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
>  allow connections to be brought up before you log in. 
OT: is this Soren Sandmann?
If so, I'm pretty sure now I understand why I had no replies on a mail
I sent him lately...

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 15:13 +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
>  On 10/23/07, Dan Williams <dcbw(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  > Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in general)
>  > I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
>  > allow connections to be brought up before you log in.
>  
>  OT: is this Soren Sandmann?
>  If so, I'm pretty sure now I understand why I had no replies on a mail
>  I sent him lately... 
Correct :)

Dan

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 23:32 +0100, Adam Huffman wrote:
>  On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Dan Williams wrote:
>  
>  > Right; NM 0.7 and later is definitely _not_ targetted at a "very narrow
>  > niche".  It's targeted at hopefully >= 75% of the use-cases of Fedora.
>  > 
>  > Perhaps this weekend (unless I'm still fixing bugs with NM in general)
>  > I'll integrate the work Soren did for a system config service which will
>  > allow connections to be brought up before you log in.  That's the only
>  > real blocker to using NM in a GUI-less server-type environment if you
>  > like.  Other than that, most of the bits for static IP support are in
>  > (applet bits to follow), the options to lock things like 802.3 duplex,
>  > speed, and other stuff are in-progress by Tambet, and most of the
>  > wireless options work.  
>  > 
>  > By the holidays, I expect we can flip NM on by default in Rawhide, even
>  > if it's not default in F8.
>  > 
>  
>  A general comment re. NM.  It did seem odd the way such a large change
>  was made so late in the F8 development cycle, with no real discussion I
>  could see (please do point me to such a discussion if there was one). 
It's mostly about the D-Bus interface.  Since the D-Bus interface is no
longer insane, but quite clear and usable, switching to 0.7 as an F8
update is completely out of the question.  With the new architecture,
it's possible to add the following things as follow-on updates to F8
that would be impossible using 0.6.x branch:

1) multiple active devices
2) good static IP support
3) PPP and Bluetooth support
4) Broadband card support (GPRS/UMTS/EVDO/etc)
5) internet connection sharing
6) better handling of similar APs with different security or on
different radio bands

These are all things people want and all are only possible building on
the architecture that 0.7 provides.

Yes, it's a gamble, and it'll be a bit rocky.  But that's _also_
compounded by landing the mac80211 stack and it's 8 or so new drivers in
F8 as well (p54, iwl3945, iwl4965, b43legacy, b43, rt2x00, ath5k,
zd1211).  So many bugs people might encounter with wireless in F8 will
be of kernel driver origin, not necessarily due to NetworkManager.  We
just have to sort out the bugs wherever they may be.

Dan

>  For quite a long time it was unusable for lots of people and still
> seems
>  a little flaky.
>  
>  Was it a case of the rewrite taking longer than planned?

any plans to make wireless more user-friendly in Fedora 9?

[Valent Turkovic]

Whoow this was an insightful thread into Fedora networking... thank you all.

Valent.


-- 
http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic