Yet again I am totally confused trying to get a WiFi connection to work. The real problem is that I don't really understand what the Network panel applet is supposed to do for me. Is there any good HowTo or similar for this applet?
The first question is what's it called? In order to try and find out anything about it by a Google search for example I need to know what I'm looking for. Ah, it does have an "About" entry, it's the NetworkManager applet, version 0.8. (Running on Xubuntu 10.04)
Firstly what's *supposed* to happen when/if there's a wireless network available? Do I need to do anything or should something appear in the applet?
If nothing appears and I know (hope?) there's a network about can I do anything to make things happen?
I am sitting here at the moment (using a mobile phone dongle to send this) in a place where I know there's a wireless network available and I know what the key/password to us it is.
My mobile phone quite happily tells me "WiFi network found"
One computer here is totally silent about the presence of any Wifi, the other can see something but gives me little clue about how to connect to it. Am I supposed to Add a wireless connection, if so how do I find all the right values for:- SSID Mode BSSID (presume leave empty) MAC address (presume leave empty) MTU (presume 'automatic')
Security (i.e. what sort is the 'norm', no one providing me with WiFi seems to be able to tell me)
As I said there's very little help I can find for this, there are bit's and pieces of specific information for particular cases but I can't really find anything that tells me 'all about NetworkManager' (or at least the panel applet).
A search for NetworkManager applet howto produces several little tutorials on bits and pieces but no proper overall help.