The NetworkManager tries to ease the usage of wireless networks from a users point of view. The next version 0.6.5 will incorporate support for a range of authentication methods which are often used in large WLAN deployments.

The NetworkManager is an irreplaceable tool when you work with changing networks on a Linux computer: it can manage different wireless LANs as well as wired LANs and even VPN connections. And of course, you can switch easily between the networks without any problems.

NM’s release by Red Hat was the breakthrough which made networking on Linux user machines really easy. Today almost every bigger distribution includes NetworkManager.

However, there are shortcomings.

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