[Mageia-dev] Drakxnet, drakroam and Draknetcenter : let's fix it or throw it.

[Thomas Lottmann]

Hello,

I should have written this mail much sooner, but finally, I am totally, 
completely and starting to be hatefully fed up of these tools.

The Mandriva/Mageia tools that manage the network on computers, 
especially the wireless networks are completely dysfunctional. While the 
Network Center does not seem to even communicate with the system tools 
to know what is happening during the link setup, it does not 
auto-refresh network lists properly.

Since 2010.1 now even mixes up itself in it's own network scripts (the 
ones stored in wireless.d). This maxes it wrongly detect numerous 
wireless points (he seen WPA2 Enterperise hotspots as opened or WEP, or 
more nerving, becomes incapable or storing the right authentication 
information). A tool that breaks itself is a complete shame!

The GUI is also appalling. Despite it's numerous possibilities, it is a 
mess and 60% of it cannot be used by something else than the system or a 
network expert.

The code itself is undocumented and it extremely difficult to read.

These tools are getting really bad and not working properly anyway since 
a long time now. So either we fix it and improve it (recoding?), either 
we definitely switch to Network Manager. I am ready to participate if 
necessary (despite my lack of competence), but I do not want to see 
these tools 'as is' on my computer anymore, and no longer want to see 
these issues that down Mageia's reputation in comparison to other 
popular projects here such as Arch, Fedora or Ubuntu, who do have proper 
tools delivered by default.

This is not the first time I complain about this tool. We should not 
leave this unchanged. It is far too annoying and pushing to so much loss 
of time.

Yours sincerely,.

Thomas.