Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:48:18 -0500 From: Chess Griffin <chess@chessgriffin.com> To: "Scott I. Remick" <scott@sremick.net> Cc: freebsd-gnome@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GUI wireless tools? Message-ID: <20080130194817.GA1216@localhost> In-Reply-To: <pan.2008.01.30.19.29.06@sremick.net> References: <pan.2008.01.30.19.29.06@sremick.net>
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--jRHKVT23PllUwdXP Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable * Scott I. Remick <scott@sremick.net> [2008-01-30 19:29:07]: > One thing that has jumped out at me is the apparently lack of a GUI=20 > utility for discovery of and easy-connecting to wireless access points.= =20 > Am I missing something? Other than Network Settings, which requires you= =20 > to manually enter a known SSID and so on. What do other people use?=20 > Preferably GUI, because while I don't fear the CLI part of the point of= =20 > this laptop will be to "show it off", so eye-candy counts. Support of WEP= =20 > and WPA necessary. >=20 For now, I just use command line tools. However, maybe there is something on the horizon. There is a really nice Python based GUI application for managing wired and wireless networks called 'Wicd' (http://wicd.sourceforge.net). It supports WEP, WPA, and most other things you'd expect. It is similar to the GNOME Network Manager found on Linux, but much better in many ways. It is basically a GUI front end to standard command line tools to manage networks. It works very well in Linux and I have tested it on Slackware and Arch Linux. The bad news is that currently there are lots of Linuxisms in this application. It calls the Linux command line tools and options that are not the same as in FreeBSD. It also installs in /opt. :/ Anyway, I contacted the developer several months ago and asked him whether he'd be open to making his application more OS agnositc and he was very interested and willing. He said the current SVN version, which I have not tried, makes major changes to how the application is configured and used, and seemed to indicate that one would be able to manually choose which CLI Wicd uses, as well as where it gets installed. In short, he seemed like he would like to make his application work on FreeBSD. I offered to help test/debug and write patches where I can (my Python skills are not that strong, though) and he said he'd get back in touch with me once development on his next stable branch occurs. =20 So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I think this application has lots of promise. Chess --=20 Chess Griffin GPG Public Key: 0x0C7558C3 http://www.chessgriffin.com --jRHKVT23PllUwdXP Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFHoNSBKzd9mAx1WMMRAtgOAJ0UfRFSfXzLXuuptAT7k0vfbzCZaQCeLeTS +5/SxjzESFmVPJie+jfroQQ= =q3b4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --jRHKVT23PllUwdXP--
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