There are many things to like in modern Linux. NetworkManager is NOT one of them.

I have never had as many problems directly caused by one application, across so many machines, across so many distributions, as NetworkManager. For those who don’t know, NetworkManager is your friendly helper application (mistakenly) adopted by distros to handle setting up networks. This would be well and good if it, I dunno, actually worked? I won’t recount my long painful history with it. Suffice it to say, everywhere I see it … everywhere … I immediately replace it with wicd. There is a very good reason why I do this. Wicd just works. Never any problem with it. Wicd does what NetworkManager says it does. NetworkManager is also not supposed to show up on servers. Its a bad enough tool on its own … on a server? Its a disaster. So, I found it strange that on the last update for the OS on our central server (running the server version of the distro), NetworkManager reared its ugly head. Connections were going up and down, in standard NetworkManager style. Enough to drive a person nuts. Ugh. NetworkManager. Just say no.