This wraps iwd tools I think. Even though, to be fair to the spirit of your comment, I don't see anything in the readme offering significant more functionality than iwctl
The chances that your distro ships with network manager are multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though… I don't think iwd is the default anywhere?
FWIW there's also wpa_cli which tends to work almost always (since everything wraps wpa_supplicant in the end), but it's a CLI rather than a TUI, and not a particularly usable one.
> multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though
Even if that were true (and ignoring the fact that they aren't alternatives to each other, like other comments point out)
If you're on a distro with iwd you might still want a TUI without having NetworkManager installed. A tool doesn't need to be universally needed to be useful
I noticed my error. To be fair, I don't think I read the diagram backwards. I think the diagram is drawn backwards instead. In it, iwd seems to talk to the iwd backend via D-Bus as they're close together.
Or maybe that's a diagram technique I'm just not used to.
It reads as a fairly normal diagram to me; NetworkManager has an iwd backend component/plugin that talks over D-Bus to iwd, which in turn stands on top of ell which in turn stands on the kernel (which itself contains a bunch of components of interest).
NetworkManager can use iwd as a wifi backend instead of wpa_supplicant, but nm isn't needed as iwd can also manage the networks on its own. iwd should never run at the same time (on a single network interface) as wpa_supplicant, as wpa_supplicant is (almost?) entirely superseeded by it.
That paragraph of the article looks to be ~6 years out of date according to the network manager version number it lists, around the time of the initial iwd release, and the whole article seems to be at least 2-3 years out of date since then iwd is well into version 2.x now.
Distros like Ubuntu have defaulted to iwd as the NM backend for Wi-Fi for a couple years (and now in the LTS version). It really is a quite popular and stable replacement to wpa_supplicant.
What should I be reading to understand exactly how the pieces fit together?
I'm on Kubuntu, and have been suffering wifi disconnects for years across multiple computers with multiple USB wifi dongles and multiple access points. Literally not a bit of hardware shared, not even the access points. I suspect that Kubuntu shuts down USB wifi dongles after a period of time, as the only reliable way to get back online is to simply disconnect then reconnect the USB dongle. I forget what dmesg says (on mobile now) but it's something to the effect of a voluntary disconnect.
This is more likely to be a driver issue than management issue.
I think, this was posted to HN before, but I cannot find the article right now, but the gist of it is: both WiFi h/w vendors and Linux driver authors are to blame for the dismal state of events. On the h/w vendor side everything as per usual: no drivers, or broken drivers, incorrect product labeling or self-identification, false or imprecise advertisement of available features. On Linux side: slow inclusion of community-provided drivers for various WiFi modems, no real effort at cataloging and unification / systematization of available drivers.
My experience so far is this: Intel h/w is the one that has best Linux support. So, if you are on Realtec or Mediatec, you are getting the short end of the stick.
Another universal problem: WiFi protocol keeps iterating at a relatively high speed. Which means that you are often in a situation where either your modem or your router don't speak the same protocol at a good level, and the middle-ground that they find is not well-supported or, sometimes will only be found after lengthy unsuccessful attempts by both sides to do the handshake. This is often also exacerbated by the management software which may misidentify these "handshake problems" and "solve" them by restarting something in the network stack, essentially sending you into an infinite loop of trying to connect.
In my unfortunate case with my latest PC build, I had to swap three WiFi modems before I found one that worked satisfactory with the router I have. So, if you have some extra $ to throw at your problem: maybe try getting another WiFi modem?
We had disconnects in our office (so very different machines, different Linux distros and a Mac at least). Don't remember for sure, I believe the message was reauthentication successful and after that connection was lost.
The AP runs OpenWrt. We worked around it by changing the reauthentication interval to 8 hours. Those working longer have to deal with it... Yeah, it's probably a weaker security now...
I've never had that problem on Kubuntu, so it's not a general Kubuntu issue. Multiple different access points, but just one PCIe wireless adapter (identified as "Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter").
> The chances that your distro ships with network manager are multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though… I don't think iwd is the default anywhere?
It doesn't matter what the default is, though. Some people don't use NM, and this tool is for them.
> (since everything wraps wpa_supplicant in the end)
That's not true. IWD doesn't require wpa_supplicant.
