Re: NetworkManager instead of Wicd in ‘%desktop-services’?

[Andy Wingo <wingo@igalia.com>]

On Mon 31 Jul 2017 03:35, Kei Kebreau <kei@openmailbox.org> writes:

> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> Hello Guix!
>>
>> Shouldn’t we replace Wicd with NetworkManager in ‘%desktop-services’?
>>
>> I’ve given it a try on a GuixSD GNOME installation and it appears to
>> work well, and it’s obviously well-integrated with GNOME, whereas Wicd
>> is a bit hidden (one has to know what to look for) and “foreign.”
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Now, as someone who doesn’t use GNOME, I wonder if NM would work well
>> for me.  Last time I tried it’s CLI was too low-level to be usable, and
>> I don’t remember seeing a curses interface.  Suggestions?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ludo’.
>
> I'm in favor of the change as long as NetworkManager's equivalents to
> wicd-gtk and wicd-curses are installed by default. Mark brought up
> nmtui; that sounds like something we should enable. Also, it would be
> nice to have notifications work (if they don't already) when using
> nm-applet. I hear that this depends on xfce4-notifyd?

It seems like all GNOME users are ready for this change.  I tried it out
locally and it's quite nice.  Patch like this:

    diff --git a/gnu/services/desktop.scm b/gnu/services/desktop.scm
    index 0509bd8a4..f12fe78e5 100644
    --- a/gnu/services/desktop.scm
    +++ b/gnu/services/desktop.scm
    @@ -810,7 +810,8 @@ with the administrator's password."
     
              ;; The D-Bus clique.
              (avahi-service)
    -         (wicd-service)
    +         (service network-manager-service-type)
    +         (service wpa-supplicant-service-type)
              (udisks-service)
              (upower-service)
              (accountsservice-service)

The network manager command also seems to include `nmtui' for a
curses-based interface, and `nmcli' for a command-line interface.  I
don't know if there's an applet or something like that, but of course
that could be installed as part of the xfce-desktop-service package.
Seems to me like network manager could be a good default for Guix
desktop systems.

Andy