Hi. On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 03:36:29PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote: > Debian doesn't use "iwd" (whatever that is) to configure network > interfaces. Whatever created this file, it's not being used.
That statement is incorrect. Even then "Debian" actually means "an OS installation", iwd is a part of the main archive, iwd can be installed by user, and iwd can be used to configure IEEE 802.11-compliant network interface. Whenever the file mentioned should be used by iwd in any way is a different question, of course. > Debian uses /etc/network/intefaces, which is a file documented by the > man page interfaces(5). Any interface that's correctly defined in this > file will be configured by it. Not entirely correct. interfaces(5) is only used by either ifupdown or ifupdown2. While the former has "important" priority (the latter is "optional") in bullseye, it's still possible to run Debian, but have no ifupdown or ifupdown2 installed. And even the "correct configuration" of IEEE 802.11-compliant interface at interfaces(5) will do no good unless wpasupplicant (which has "optional" priority) is installed. > If network-manager (NM) is installed, it will try to configure any > interfaces that are *not* defined in /etc/network/interfaces. Pretty accurate description, barring the fact that NetworkManager by itself cannot actually configure 802.11-compliant device. It uses wpasupplicant (which iwd is an alternative for) to do that. > Debian also allows you to configure interfaces using some crazy systemd > thing. Such a harsh description of a poor systemd-networkd. And calling a simple set of plain-text configuration files "crazy" is way too close to exaggeration. "No popular Linux distribution is using systemd-networkd by default" is much closer to the truth. Reco