Re: [FF-laptop-LSU] WiFi Discussion Thread

On Mon, Sep 1, 2025 at 10:40 AM ykla <yklaxds@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Currently, FreeBSD lacks proper support for tools such as
> NetworkManager, plasma-nm, and nmcli. This has caused a very serious
> impact on laptop and desktop users. Switching networks often requires
> many command-line steps to complete, which is inconvenient and
> unfriendly for daily use.
>
> At the moment, the only similar software available is
> net-mgmt/networkmgr, but unfortunately this tool is almost unusable.
> It has many bugs, and its maintenance is not active.
>
> I sincerely hope that in the future FreeBSD can have a tool similar to
> NetworkManager (with GUI integration such as plasma-nm and CLI tools
> like nmcli), which would significantly improve the user experience for
> laptop and desktop users.
>
> Thank you very much for your attention.
> ykla
>

Yes, this is a known pain point for FreeBSD. We at $WORK took a stab
at porting NetworkManager, but it turned out to be a too complex task.

Instead, we ported connman, which fills the same niche as NM at it
served us well, but the problem with this approach is that we have to
reimplement all the frontend pieces too.

So, the proper way forward would be to either
1. Dive into properly porting NetworkManager. This is substantial
amount of work and it would require a developer knowledgeable in
system networking. This would also require
collaborating with upstream to figure if they would accept our patches.
2. Implementing our own D-Bus daemon that exports the same interface
as real NetworkManager. Such an approach was taken by
sysutils/bsdisks, for instance, and I still believe it was a right
thing to do.

With a working D-Bus interface we'll get all the KDE and Gnome
networking UIs working out of the box without the need to write our
own GUI for network management.