It's a bit late, but in wicd you can use usb adapters (i did with a
ralink based one) or share wifi via ethernet. It's tricky, yes, but
with the use of scripts it can be done. At the time, i had a big help
from someone in the (german) ubuntu user forums.

Also: Ceni is an excellent ncurses based tool to administrate network
connections (it's based on dhcpd and wpa_supplicant), more basic then
networkmanager and wicd ((who both, it think, there are not just
overlays but they use their own way to deal with the hardware; in fact
iirc they are not compatible with wpa_supplicant running (??) ).

At least, may be one should have a look at tinycore linux, how they
deal with the network connections (i have it running on a small old
netbook and it is really smart and easy, although it does not start
automatically on boot the wifi connection).

May be someone more expert knows. In any case, with some tweaking, it
should be possible to offer good viable alternative to network-manager.

Cheers!

Am Mon, 02 May 2016 04:19:07 +0000 schrieb
dng-request@???:

> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 12:49:44 +1200
> From: Daniel Reurich <daniel@???>
> To: "dng@???" <dng@???>
> Subject: Re: [DNG] network-manager depends on libpam-systemd
> Message-ID: <5726A428.50107@???>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On 02/05/16 12:01, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Sun, May 01, 2016 at 07:56:09PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> >> On Sun, May 01, 2016 at 12:40:34PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> >>> Hi All.
> >>>
> >>> I've completed the upgrade to Devuan Jessie Beta over Debian
> >>> Jessie on both my laptop and desktop. Nice work!
> >>>
> >>> I use Network Manager on my laptop. It is configured for the
> >>> networks I attach to most frequently and allows a seamless
> >>> connection when tethering to my Android phone via USB. So shoot
> >>> me!
> >>
> >> I use wicd instead of Network Manager, in devan jessie. I don't
> >> know if it will talk to your phone over USB, but might it be worth
> >> a try?
> >
> > As far as I know, all these network managers and the like are front
> > ends to the same underlying low-level system components. You may
> > find that they share the same connection data base.
> >
> wicd only deals specifically with the wifi/ethernet case. There is no
> capability or plugins I've found for wicd to provide management for
> vpn connectivity, bluetooth or usb-serial connectors.
>
> I could be wrong on that of course, but I didn't find a solution for
> my vpn needs with wicd when I looked.
>
> Regards,
>     
> Daniel