Switching to Fedora 10 and Wicd Wireless Network Manager

My last few posts have been pretty technical, so I thought I'd write an opinion piece for once, in case anyone cares. I've begun fiddling around with Linux again, and I went back to where I left off using Linux Mint, only I grabbed the new release of version 6. It felt essentially the same as Linux Mint 5, only this time it froze. A lot. Like more than it used to. I had the same problem with Ubuntu, and I know Mint is based on Ubuntu, so I decided to try an OS that wasn't Debian-based for once.

I downloaded the most recent version of Fedora, version 10. So far I really like it. I'm a big fan of GNOME, and I've found the switch relatively easy. I also noticed that I got a little more involved with the command line with Fedora, which is a good thing. I'm glad to learn more about the internal workings of a Linux distro, as it'll come in handy in the future.

My biggest project so far on Fedora has been trying to get the Wicd wireless network manager working. I hated the standard GNOME NetworkManager so I went looking for alternatives. The only problem was, after I installed Wicd 1.5.9, it wouldn't connect to WPA/WPA2 networks. After looking through some logs I determined that it was to do with an external command, wpa_supplicant not having enough privileges to do what it was supposed to. After lengthy conversations and help from the people on the Freenode #wicd IRC channel, I tried installing the release candidate for Wicd 1.6. One of the Wicd authors did some specific error-fixing for me before I got the latest revision. I also helped him uncover some other bugs. Anyway, it fixed my problem, but opened up a new one. Now Wicd would only connect if I restarted the daemon. It runs virtually identical with the same privileges from boot, but apparently it just doesn't want to work unless I restart it.

Anyway, it's been fun so far and I'm really getting stuck on Fedora.