I tried upgrading from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex this weekend. Big mistake. If I disregard the total dpkg meltdown that I, as usually, had to resolve manually there still remains this recurring madness called Network Manager.

I’m an engineer. I have a masters degree in computer engineering. I have worked professionally with GNU/Linux since 2000 and been a die hard user of it since I left OS/2 behind in 1996. But come on! Why does it take a software engineer to perform a simple upgrade? Even worse, why do I have to be a network engineering specialist to figure out why simple wired ethernet doesn’t work out of the box?

Network Manager fails completely to:

  1. Select wired network over an open Telia hotspot
  2. Distinguish between my primary and secondary wired interfaces
  3. Completely loses my /etc/resolv.conf all the time

Sorry, but that is completely inexcusable! Network Manager, you suck! “Pain-Free Networking”, my ass! :-P