NetworkManager instead of network-admin for wifi

One of the big new things on Ubuntu Feisty (scheduled for release in mid-late April) is the Gnome NetworkManger, which is meant to make networking as automagic as possible.

The NetworkManager was on my desktop panel for a few months already, but I didn't try hard enough to make it work until this morning. Apparently, it conflicts with the original Debian way of configuring the network through /etc/network/interfaces. On the desktop, one used to use network-admin (in Ubuntu, it's the menus System > Administration > Network, and toggle off "Roaming Mode"), which in effect edited /etc/network/interfaces.

If for some reason, clicking on the roaming mode, and restarting the NetworkManager service (can do with reboot if unsure) doesn't do it, then you would need to edit /etc/network/interfaces with only the following in it:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Restart NetworkManager or reboot, and all should be fine. Depending on the type of support that NetworkManager has for your wireless device, then you should be prompted for a key or passphrase upon trying to log on to a given wireless network. The biggest improvement for me of NM over n-a was the graphical listing of networks found. It was part of Dapper, if I remember it well, but was removed in Edgy. The alternative was to do a "iwlist scanning" on the command line.