Koda

On the eve of GNOME 2.14, it would only seem suitable to do a little feature on two of the tray doodads that we’ll likely be seeing a lot more of in the months to come. Emphasizing dbus-powered hardware pluggability, both of these little apps provide useful and pretty information particularly useful to mobile users. Read on for a quick review/preview, and Ubuntu apt-get commands for those who are running Dapper.

NetworkManager

When connecting, NetworkManager is not without it’s fair share of rotating orbs.

NetworkManager is the type of app that if done right, is truly fantastic, but if not, isn’t really all that useful. A while ago, I tried to get NetworkManager running on Ubuntu Breezy: it was a disaster. Nothing really worked, things didn’t autostart, and my wireless card was missing in action. In the time since I last saw it, it sure has come a long way, enough to earn it a permanent 22x22 spot on my system tray.

One of the nicest things about NetworkManager is it’s unobtrusive interface; it is a meditation in simplicity. There is no preferences window, no configuration options; just pure plug and play. However, while things are automatic, NetworkManager’s choices are intelligent, seamlessly choosing the best connection available. NetworkManager’s selections are sensible, and prioritizing wire over wireless, previously chosen and password-remembered access points over unknown ones. When NetworkManager needs a password, it will ask for it. Afterwards, keys are stored in the gnome-keyring, using your session-wide master password.

When I last tried NetworkManager, getting it to start up automatically was a pain. While intelligently split into gui and daemon components, figuring out when and what to autostart was ouside the bounds of how far I wished to pursue it. Thankfully, in the Ubuntu package, it now autostarts as a /etc/dbus-1/system.d/ script, and the gui component is inserted into the new-and-improved gnome-session startup category.

While NetworkManager is in my opinion ready for general use, it’s not without it’s rough edges. For some reason, the network manager tray applet is extra wide on my system. When I originally started it up, my wireless connection was not found (deja vu). After a little reading and cleaning up unneeded junk from /etc/network/interfaces, it found it.

NetworkManager’s obvious strong point is in it’s excellent user interface. If cleanliness, automatic pluggability, and mobility are your thing, it’s definitely worth the 15 minutes it’ll take to figure it out.

Ubuntu Install:
apt-get install network-manager nm-applet

GNOME Power Manager

Antialiased, and ready for action.

Essentially the next generation of power configuration and management for GNOME, GNOME Power Manager lives up to it’s name, with organization and simplicity that would be expected.

Ironically, the biggest thing for me to get used to with gnome-power-manager was the new look of the battery meter. For some reason, moving from the pixel-perfect old GNOME battery status applet to the cartoony and antialiased gnome-power-manager took a while to get comfortable with.

Gnome-power-manager is quite a bit more configurable than NetworkManager, providing a full control panel to modify system “policy” on power conditions. While allowing one to set screen timeouts, automatic shutdown, and suspend conditions in one interface, the GUI is kept nice and clean.

One annoyance I experienced early on in using gnome-power-manager was the fact that for me, neither suspend or hibernate work on my Inspiron 9100. For a while, even though the program responibly informed me that on some computers suspend would not be usable (which believe me, after days of tinkering I well know), I would occasionally return to a hung computer. While this is partly my fault, do be warned: be sure to know what your computer is set to be doing in terms of idle time suspend, especially if your hardware support is less than desirable.

On a whole, gnome-power-manager is a nice improvement to GNOME’s power management interfaces. Fully taking advantage of the new gnome notification system, it’s informative balloons are a *huge* improvement on the modal warning windows one had to deal with in the old days. For this and this aspect alone, gnome-power-manager is worth the install.

Ubuntu Install:
apt-get install power-manager gnome-power-manager