On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 01:54:17PM +0100, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Fri, 2013-10-04 at 07:54 +0200, moshe nahmias wrote:
I think that it must be possible to make the icon visible as an option. I use a cellular modem on my laptop and the easiest way to connect with it to the net is by clicking that icon...
I guess that it's possible to connect from other places, but it won't be as easy.
GNOME 3.10 has a combined system tray. Your cellular connection will be visible in it. (In other words, don't worry, it will work exactly how you expect it to). The change we're discussing applies only to boring plain wired ethernet connections.
Use Case #1 for having the wired connection icon show at all times is to know when your network connection isn't working locally, as opposed to some remote problem. If you are connected to your LAN, the icon would show connected, but if your WAN/Internet connection is down, google.com will fail to connect. This is the first question any tech support person would ask the end user--does your computer show that it is connected (do you have a link light on the NIC)? We should be making this determination easier, not harder.
Use Case #2 is for switching between different wired network configuration profiles and turning multiple NICs on or off.
Why are we adding more and more functionality to NetworkManager, just to "take it away" from the user interface?
I guess we'll need yet another GNOME Shell extension to fix this too.