Plasma-nm

Summary

Replace current network applet in KDE with a new one and bring the latest news in NetworkManager to KDE.

Owner

Name: Jan Grulich, Lukáš Tinkl
Email: jgrulich@redhat.com, ltinkl@redhat.com
Release notes owner: jgrulich

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 20
Last updated: 2013-07-16
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Plasma-nm is a new plasma applet for network management in KDE which uses the latest KDE technologies. It supports all connection types from NetworkManager like bonding, bridging etc. and it's simplier to maintain it than the old one. It absoletes the old network applet which is hardly maintainable.

Benefit to Fedora

Plasma NM provides a modern and intuitive interface to configure network connections, add new ones (like VPNs) and edit them in a user-friendly way. Unlike the existing applet, its codebase is much cleaner and smaller (~50%) and therefore easier to maintain and develop in the long term. The UI itself is written entirely in QML, making it reusable in other interfaces like Plasma Active and bringing in line with the rest of the Plasma Workspace.

Scope

This feature affects only KDE. The only necessary action is to remove and obsolete the kde-plasma-networkmanagement package and ensure that kde-plasma-nm is installed by default.

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Network connections (including secrets stored in KWallet) are automatically migrated to the new applet.

How To Test

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

User Experience

Users can benefit from a streamlined and highly usable[1] QML interface to handle their network connections.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjuVND3VAoM

Dependencies

Plasma NM depends on NetworkManager and ModemManager packages.

Contingency Plan

No plan is necessary. KDE SC would be shipped with the current network management applet (kde-plasma-networkmanagement).

Documentation