I am of the idea that the startup behaviour should be as follows:When a newbie starts up Puppy and wants to connect to a WLAN, is it straightforward or is their some possible confusion in the steps? Does the choice of different tools itself cause confusion?
- If there is "ifplugstatus" positive in one of the interfaces, but there is no configuration file (e.g. /eth0mode) then try to do DHCP. Now that the rc.network starts in the background it should not cause unnecessary delays at first boot.
Failing, or in addition to that I personally like the "Connect" icon on the desktop I think that it makes it clear what tool to use for the different connection types.
The original intention for my changes to the Network wizard to include wireless and scanning was to reduce the number of tools. Since then other tools such as Pwireless have emerged. The keyword here is "choice". While it may be good to have a tool that does everything, some other users may prefer to have purpose-specific gadgets as different people work differently.
In my case I use a single connection 90% of the time so I prefer one took where I set things up. I realize that that's different for people that do more roaming.
One problem I see is that if you have too many options on the surface, new users feel overwhelmed.
The "Connect" icon seems the right place to organize those tools.
I've debugged and investigated this long enough to conclude that the settings are saved properly.After establishing a WLAN connection, are the settings saved so that reconnection happens on next boot? The Network Wizard is supposed to do that automatically, but there has been some forum feedback that this is not happening properly.
The problem is on boot. The parameters are there, the rc.network uses them, but they fail to start properly. Here are the most common scenarios and the suggested workarounds:
- The driver takes too long initializing so it is still not ready by the time the rc.network is initializing connections: There has been a suggestion to add a "delay" option in the network wizard so the user can configure how long to delay the initialization. I don't know if this has already been implemented.
- The driver does not load properly at boot (that happens the bcm43xx). I use that driver and I've modified my rc.local to rmmod the driver, wait, and modprobe it again, I then can set the connection parameters. I haven't found a cleaner workaround.
I think it's being handled gracefully:What about people who use both Ethernet-wired and wireless connection? Maybe they have a laptop and sometimes have to use one, not the other. I'm not sure, but it seems that this situation is not being handled gracefully. Perhaps device drivers are conflicting?
If you have both connections configured, it will use those for which the ifplugstatus is positive.
Bottom line
I think that we have the tools, we just need to organize them in a clear way for new users but also in a handy way for more experienced users.
I have some ideas that i'll be adding but let's kick off this discussion.