Pain-Free Networking

Networking on Linux right now is painful for the mobile desktop user, especially in comparison to other operating systems. A laptop user should never need to use the command line or configuration files to manage their network; it should "Just Work" as automatically as possible and intrude as little as possible into the user's workflow. NetworkManager attempts to make networking invisible. When moving into areas you've been before, NetworkManager automatically connects to the last network the user chose to connect to. Likewise, when back at the desk, NetworkManager will switch to the faster, more reliable wired network connection.

Flexible, Extendable, Open

The most important pieces of NetworkManager are desktop-environment and distribution agnostic, functioning just as well in Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc. across distributions like Fedora Core, Ubuntu, SuSE, Debian, and Gentoo. And since the NetworkManager components communicate with each other using dbus, it's easy to to build network-aware applications in languages like C, C++, and Python.

Application Integration

Using the awesome power and flexibility of dbus and hal, NetworkManager provides facilities for other desktop applications like browsers and email clients to be aware of the network's state and adjust their operation accordingly for features like offline operation.

More Information

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