>>       You have mostly two ways to deal with wifi.

>>       1) you select the station and enter the key everytime you
>> connect. 2) your system remembers the ssid's and keys of all stations
>> you need and it connects you automatically - this is called
>> wifi-roaming.

>>       I think wicd matches the first case only.

>>       AFAIU, ceni allows you to either work according to the first
>> method or make the basic configuration of wpa_supplicant for the
>> second method, something you can also do with a text editor. There
>> are many howtos on the web, search for the following 3 keywords
>> "wifi" "roaming" "wpa_supplicant".

>>       wpa_supplicant may or may not invoke the dhcp client, depending
>> on what it reads in /etc/network/interfaces.

>>       Hope this helps.

>>                                       Didier
> First of all merci!

     Yes, you're getting me right. Thanks for resolving my uncertainty 
about wicd :-)

     In wifi roaming mode, once configured, 
wpa_supplicant+ifup[+dhclient] do it all. I gave a try to ceni and it 
offered me two options: connect to an available station or rewrite my 
wpa_supplicant.conf to prepare roaming. I didn't need the first and 
didn't take the risk to mess my working config with the second.

     wpa_supplicant is meant to be started by ifup and stopped by 
ifdown; it keeps running for the duration of the connection. The whole 
machinery is configured in the interfaces file and uses the ifupdown 
scripts. Have a look to the howtos to understand how it works; it gives 
you a great flexibility by allowing you to provide fixed IP addresses 
for some SSIDs and DHCP for others.

     I personally use to write by hand the initial wpa_supplicant.conf 
(or copy it from another laptop) and then use wpa_gui to enter a new 
SSID/password. I hoped ceni was some curses replacement for wpa_gui, but 
I'm afraid it's something else. Until someone gives it a full try and 
explains in details what it does.

     Didier