Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port.
Shamelessly stealing from the guy I shave: Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:33:35 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: conspire@linuxmafia.com Subject: Things to look up, on the wireless matter Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. X-Mas: Bah humbug. List arrived at using apt-cache. ceni - Curses interface to /etc/network/interfaces connman - Intel Connection Manager daemon iw - tool for configuring Linux wireless devices network-config - Simple network configuration tool python-wicd - wired and wireless network manager - Python module wicd - wired and wireless network manager - metapackage [0] wicd-cli - wired and wireless network manager - scriptable console client [0] wicd-curses - wired and wireless network manager - Curses client wicd-daemon - wired and wireless network manager - daemon wicd-gtk - wired and wireless network manager - GTK+ client wicd-kde - Wired and wireless network manager - plasmoid wifi-radar - graphical utility for managing Wi-Fi profiles wpasupplicant - client support for WPA and WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i) [1] wpagui - graphical user interface for wpa_supplicant wireless-tools - Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions 'iw' looks promising and something to watch. http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/iw (It's the replacement for iwconfig, which is now deprecated.) http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/ calls out NetworkManager, wicd, and connman as 'wireless managers'. [0] Sometimes packaged as wicd/wicd-client [1] Sometimes packaged as wpa_supplicant (A propos of nothing special, I'm going to be in Wellington, NZ for http://www.aucontraire.org.nz/ , 12-14 July, and just before/after.) -- Cheers, Being die-hard loyal to a company is like being in an intimate rela- Rick Moen tionship with a brick. The brick cares nothing for you. The brick rick@linux will only cause you pain when it forgets about you. The brick serves mafia.com only its interests, and nothing else is of consequence. --Mackieman