Ubuntu's networking system has something which Windows XP lacks - locations. These allow you to toggle between multiple configurations - for example, "Work" and "Home" - so that you don't have to manually change all of your settings when you change networks. This is very useful for laptops and other portable computers.
However, it has one very major oversight - once you've saved a configuration, that's it. You can't rename it or edit it - only delete it and create another. Neither can you reorder the locations within the dropdown list - they're just in order of first-last created. Also, you can't delete a location (or view it in order to derive a new one from it) without first activating it - a task which can take a considerable amount of time to happen, if the default gateway or DNS server (I'm not sure which; maybe either) is not reachable - i.e. you are not at that location, or one of these has changed and you need to update it.
Just how much effort would it take to actually make it possible to do these simple things? The settings must be stored somewhere - so why can't there be a simple interface for reordering, viewing, editing, renaming, deleting and creating locations without activating them?
To be honest, I haven't searched around to see if there are any applications out there which would do this nicely - I don't really care if there are. Now that I've got everything set up how I need it at the moment, it should be fine (for the time being) - so I don't need to reconfigure my locations any time soon. Consider this to be both a retrospective rant and a suggestion for an improvement which could be made to Ubuntu's network manager.
Update:
Since this post was originally written, the network manager in Ubuntu has been upgraded and most, if not all, of the improvements mentioned above have been implemented. Now all that's needed is a quicker way to swap locations - preferably without having to authenticate using gksu, as I don't see why I should have to type a password just to change network location... automatic switching based on available wireless networks (switch to whichever location has the currently connected wireless network specified, upon connection to a wireless network) would be great too, but should probably be a togglable option (perhaps on a per-location basis, i.e. "Auto-select this location when connecting to this wireless network").
However, it has one very major oversight - once you've saved a configuration, that's it. You can't rename it or edit it - only delete it and create another. Neither can you reorder the locations within the dropdown list - they're just in order of first-last created. Also, you can't delete a location (or view it in order to derive a new one from it) without first activating it - a task which can take a considerable amount of time to happen, if the default gateway or DNS server (I'm not sure which; maybe either) is not reachable - i.e. you are not at that location, or one of these has changed and you need to update it.
Just how much effort would it take to actually make it possible to do these simple things? The settings must be stored somewhere - so why can't there be a simple interface for reordering, viewing, editing, renaming, deleting and creating locations without activating them?
To be honest, I haven't searched around to see if there are any applications out there which would do this nicely - I don't really care if there are. Now that I've got everything set up how I need it at the moment, it should be fine (for the time being) - so I don't need to reconfigure my locations any time soon. Consider this to be both a retrospective rant and a suggestion for an improvement which could be made to Ubuntu's network manager.
Update:
Since this post was originally written, the network manager in Ubuntu has been upgraded and most, if not all, of the improvements mentioned above have been implemented. Now all that's needed is a quicker way to swap locations - preferably without having to authenticate using gksu, as I don't see why I should have to type a password just to change network location... automatic switching based on available wireless networks (switch to whichever location has the currently connected wireless network specified, upon connection to a wireless network) would be great too, but should probably be a togglable option (perhaps on a per-location basis, i.e. "Auto-select this location when connecting to this wireless network").
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