Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: network-manager
Aside of whether it does what it should do (it does, but not always),
NM's GUI is extremely confusing, and changes since the version 0.6 have
been for the worse. I'm sure others will add their own observations, so
here is my own non-exhaustive list of misdesigns I hope could be
improved.
* Right-button/Left-button click options are less than clearly
separated. I routinely have to try both, because I cannot rememer where
is the option I need.
+ Left-click:
* List of available wireless networks with the ability to switch among
them. None are selected by default, but once I click on one, I have to
go to the right-click panel if I want to deselect wireless.
* Misterious VPN entry with a secondary panel with options to turn it on
and off or open the configuration panel on the VPN tab. Imaginably, it
would allow switching from one VPN to another in case any were
available, but that is definitely an uncommon case. Why are VPNs turned
on and off here, and LANs on the right-click menu? Why not just list
available VPNs, if any, after the available wired and wireless
interfaces? Why show VPN options at all when no VPN is enabled? Most
people don't use a VPN or know what it is, so 95% of the time this is
just clutter.
* AFTER the spurious VPN entry, there are additional options to connect
to hidden Wifi network or create a new one. Why are these options
separated from other wireless selections?
+ Right-click:
* Activate network + activate wireless options -- why here? It would be
far clearer if the header for each section in the available networks
list had this option. In one place you would see if that type of
networking was enabled, and which network had been selected. In any
case, why is VPN separated from wired and wireless? Why can I turn
wireless and VPN off but not wired?
* Information on active connections
* Open Configuration panel
* About
The idea seems to be that left-click brings "actions" and right-click brings
"configuration" but in the case of NM this distinction is less than clear
(switching wireless networks is an action, but bringing the network down is
configuration?), so I think it would be a lot better to throw everything
together, and purge redundant entries like VPN shortcut into configuration.
+ CONTROL PANEL
------------------------
There are different tabs for wired, wireless, VPN, mobile wideband and
DSL. Each tab offers a list of the available connections of that type,
and buttons to add new ones or edit the existing.
Well, in 99.999% of the cases, most of the tabs are empty or have one
entry at the most. Why not list all the existing ones together, as
before? There wont be more than a couple in most cases, and very, very
rarely more than four.
+ ADD/EDIT WIRED:
- Connection name
- Connect automatically
- System settings -- just what is this? what does it mean? what will it do?
This option is really obscure.
- Wired:
Why again? what does it mean? are the other options not "wired"?
It is the tab shown by default, and shows MAC address and MTU settings, which I
don't think are of any interest whatsoever save for some marginal cases. Oh,
and wireless adapters also have MAC and MTU settings, which shows that the name
is a bad choice.
- 802.1x security:
Why not just call it security? Is there another kind of security I cannot see?
This excess information looks scary at best.
- IPv4 adjustments:
Again, too much information in the header. Why not call it "Network addresses"
or some such? This is the only tab that is interesting in most cases, and
should be shown by default instead of the whimsically named "Wired"
+ ADD/EDIT WIRELESS
The same observations apply here, although "Wireless security" is a much
better name for the tab.
It is not clear, in any case, what would I gain by adding networks here
instead of clicking on an available one, or on the "add hidden" or "add
new" which seem to accomplish the same but much more easily. In case I
had to refine the parameters to access one of the offered wireless
networks, the list of available networks should show the already
configured ones, and then there would maybe be a reason to have
dedicated tabs.
+ EDIT MOBILE BROADBAND
Launches a wizard. Have no mobile broadband, so no opinions here.
+ ADD/EDIT VPN
All options are greyed out! Don't know much about VPNs, but it seems
like the VPN configuration panel is not the right place to, errr,
configure a VPN. I must surely be lackin something detectable, or some
such, but if that is the case, I don't know why that panel is there, or
why does it not inform me of what do I need to do.
+ ADD/EDIT DSL
Looks better than the others. "Wired" is again a badly named tab, no
clue what "system settings" is and the "point-to-point-protocol" tab
might benefit of renaming (or maybe not).
This is about it, for now. Too many observations for one bug-report, but I
think it is a good wishlist. I hope someone finds it at least remotely
interesting and it is not instantly deemed redundant and thrown into the
oblivion folder, because it has taken me quite a while to report it, and I
really think that NM needs a lot of love to make it usable.
** Affects: network-manager (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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Network Manager GUI is extremely confusing
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/303426
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