There’s no better way to celebrate the release of NetworkManager 0.9.2 than a sip of ice-cold cocktail. It’s something pink-colored — I don’t know what — and it’s phenomenal. And if I ever run out, I just ring a bell and somebody fills it up! It’s basically like Paradise, except Paradise doesn’t have the latest version of NetworkManager. Here’s a hot tip: make your first half billion and buy yourself a private island. Then move there and write open-source software for fun. It’s a pretty great life. After a hard day on the beach bending networks to my will, I wind down by building buried hatches solely to confuse the island’s next owner (I’m trading up to a private archipelago in a few years).
But I digress. So many people contributed to this release. Unfortunately they couldn’t all fly out to my private island for the release party so I’ll just have to call them out by name instead. I’m sure they’ll take Internet fame as a consolation prize, right? So a huge thanks to Alfredo Matos, Colin Walters, Dan Winship, David Rothlisberger, Evan Broder, Florian Echtler, Gary Ching-Pang Lin, Jirí Klimeš, Larry Reaves, Ludwig Nussel, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre, Michael Stapelberg, Thomas Bechtold, Thomas Graf, Thomas Jarosch, Tore Anderson, Michael Biebl, Vincent Untz, Anders Feder, Giovanni Campagna, Murilo Opsfelder, David Woodhouse, all our translators, and all our testers. It wouldn’t have happened without you.
This release packs in some great stuff aside from the usual bug fixes and pixie dust: translated country names in the mobile broadband provider wizard, VPN details in the applet’s Connection Information dialog, auto-unlocking of GSM modems, support for libnl2 and libnl3, better IPv6 handling, enhancements for nmcli, rfkill fixes for EeePCs, GObject Introspection updates, better cooperation with unmanaged devices, timestamps for VPN connections, increased dnsmasq cache size, and more. Get your tarballs on:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/network-manager-applet/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager-openconnect/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager-openswan/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager-openvpn/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager-pptp/0.9/
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/NetworkManager-vpnc/0.9/
0.9.4: a Smörgåsbord of Freaking Awesome
What’s even more exciting is what’s all piled up for 0.9.4. We’ve killed WEXT and now use the more robust nl80211 for talking to well-behaved kernel drivers. We’ve uncoupled IPv4 and IPv6 addressing so that when one completes the connection is usable while we wait for the other one to complete or time out. We’ve added bonding support, and VLANs and bridges are next. We’ll have better firewall interaction. We’ll probably have connectivity detection as well. Many of these features are finished and merged to git master already.
Hey, 0.8.6 is out too!
If you’re into anachronisms, then we’ve got another release for you too. 0.8.6 got tagged earlier this week, and it’s got IPv6 fixes, auto-unlocking of GSM modems, improved usability of IP address and routing entry in the editor, notifications of mobile broadband changes, VPN information in the Connection Information dialog, better handling of gadget devices, retry of Ethernet connections on carrier bounces, allowing certificate paths in keyfile plugins, MAC address blacklists, on-the-fly recognition of newly installed VPN plugins, subject verification of 802.1x certificates, builds without PolicyKit, and much more.
So really it’s just raining NetworkManager goodness. Except here on my island, where it’s always sunny, breezy, and absolutely perfect. Time for another drink. Cheers.