On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 12:16:08 +0100
Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:

>      Easynetaid/netbarx is an option, preferably when it is available 
> from the repo. In the mean time, wpagui is working fine, as from many 
> years - 

I use wpa_gui every time I take one of my laptops on the road, and I
get it to work, but I wouldn't call its functionality "working fine."
First of all, its human interface is ridiculous. Instead of conversing
with the human at human level and translating for wpa_supplicant, it
converses with wpa_supplicant at wpa_supplicant level and makes the
human translate. The thing where you have to go to another tab, press
scan, press scan again, doubleclick, remember the number of the new
network, go back to the first tab, select it, and wait for your IP
address (or not) is ridiculous.

Then there's the poor documentation of the whole wpa_* line of
software: Few know how it works. Then add in dhcpcd, Ugh!

> I always wondered why there existed network-manager at all

For the reasons I enumerated above. I don't use NetworkManager because
it's too much baggage, but I have to admit, its human-engineering is
spectacular **on a window manager with a panel**.

> and I used to purge it right after install. wpagui is developped by
> the authors of wpa-supplicant. It takes a little editing of
> wpa-supplicant.conf and interfaces to start, but there are pretty
> good howtos (search for something like "wifi roaming with wpa
> supplicant")

This is good information. Thank you, I'll search. And if I can't get
wpa_gui to work in a reasonable way, eventually I'll build a state
machine that interacts with wpa_cli correctly, taking its cues and
reporting its info to a GUI I write that looks a heck of a lot like
NetworkManager (but has only dependencies wpa_supplicant, wpa_cli, and
Python Tkinter.

SteveT

Steve Litt
February 2016 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key