:: Re: [DNG] state of what's working f…
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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage
Le 09/02/2016 17:24, Steve Litt a écrit :
> 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 >

     You need little editing after install - it should be done during 
package installation, but it is not. Then you need to run wpagui only 
when you connect to a *new* wifi station. You save the config, and then 
wpa-supplicant automatically connects you the the local wifi station 
wherever you are.


     I was thinking of making that UI in ncurses, but the fact is I 
understand very little of this wifi crypting thechnology which sees a 
new protocol every year. wpagui fills all the fields of the form for you 
and you just need to fill what it can't guess: the password.


     Didier
//