From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] About

Currently there doesn't appear to be many ebuilds for Wireless Network configuration and monitoring tools in portage. The following are known to be available.

[edit] GNOME

Note for Xfce users who require panel support, the package xfce-extra/xfce4-xfapplet should provide tools that allow a Gnome applet to work.

[edit] gtkwifi

sf.net

emerge alien gnome-python-extras

cd
mkdir -p local/src/gtkwifi
cd local/src/gtkwifi
export VER="1.10"
wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gtkwifi/gtkwifi-${VER}.deb

sudo alien --to-tgz gtkwifi-${VER}.deb

sudo tar xzf gtkwifi-${VER}.tgz -C /

alt-click panel » Add to Panel... » Wireless Connection Manager

[edit] gwifiapplet

cd
mkdir -p local/src/gwifiapplet
cd local/src/gwifiapplet
export VER="0.8"
wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gwifiapplet/gwireless_applet-${VER}.tar.gz
tar xzf gwireless_applet-${VER}.tar.gz
cd gwireless_applet-${VER}
./configure && make
sudo make install

[edit] Novell's Gnome wireless switcher

(no further information provided yet)

[edit] KDE

[edit] wlassistant

WLAssistant An Kde Frontend to connect to Wifi Access Points

emerge wlassistant

[edit] Independent (suited for xfce4 and such)

[edit] WICD

WICD is a small python based GUI network manager without any Gnome or KDE dependencies. Only GTK is required (besides the networkstuff). So its perfect for users of XFCE-4 or any other small WMs. It may not be the prettiest but I think it's one of the best working and lightest one out there.

Until now it is not available in the official portage tree, see the bug report here: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198281

However, it is now a part of the sunrise overlay, so you can install it from there. Follow there instructions at http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Overlays to configure layman and add the sunrise overlay.

ebuild wicd-xxx.ebuild digest 

emerge -av wicd

You can now add the wicd daemon to the default runlevel (if you want)

rc-update add wicd default

Or just start it right now. But remember that you first have to restart DBUS so DBUS gets the config file for wicd.

/etc/init.d/dbus restart
/etc/init.d/wicd start

/usr/bin/wicd-client

Now you can start WICD by either /opt/wicd/gui.py or /opt/wicd/tray.py The tray one had a little bug (at least at my system): the idle picture for it was missing! This can easily be fixed by

cp /opt/wicd/images/no-signal.png /opt/wicd/images/idle-signal.png

I didnt like the managment of my wired ethernet port so i just deleted it in the config section. Be sure to choose the right driver for your WPA_supplicant and you are ready to roam the WIFIs :)

[edit] Network Manager

See the wiki page for NetworkManager.

[edit] WiFi Radar

This one is in portage:

emerge wifi-radar

It's a python/gtk script for managing WiFi connections and seems to work reasonably well.

This program has to be run as root in order to configure the network card. You can also use "sudo" but you may be getting this error :

 RuntimeError: could not open display

The best workaround is to use gksu:

emerge gksu
gksu wifi-radar

You will then be asked for the root password.

The other cool thing about wifi-radar is that you can run it as a daemon using

wifi-radar -d

If you run this command at boot time, wifi-radar will configure your wireless card using the network information you already provided in the graphical application.

[edit] netapplet

netapplet is a hack created for Suse linux. It is obsoleted by NetworkManager:

cd
mkdir -p local/src/netapplet
cd local/src/netapplet
export VER=1.0.8
wget http://primates.ximian.com/~rml/netapplet/netapplet-${VER}.tar.gz
tar xzf netapplet-${VER}.tar.gz
cd netapplet-${VER}
./configure && make
sudo make install

sudo /usr/local/bin/netdaemon
sudo /usr/local/bin/netapplet

[edit] RutilT

RutilT is a Gtk+2 utility for Linux that helps you configure your wireless devices. Although primely written for the rt2x00 project (Ralink chipsets), it is designed to work with any device. RutilT is a GTK+ based wireless device configuration tool, with extra support for Ralink devices. There are currently ebuilds for RutilT at [1], or you can download the tarballs from the maintainer's website: http://cbbk.free.fr/bonrom/.

Change to the directory where you downloaded the file and extract it using the command:

Change all instances of dhcpd to dhcpcd in the set_ip.sh file. The file should look now look like this:

 
  #!/bin/sh
#    Copyright (c) 2005-2007 Romain BONDUE
#    This file is part of RutilT.
#
#    RutilT is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
#
#    RutilT is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#    along with RutilT; if not, write to the Free Software
#    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
#
#
# This script is called by RutilT with 2 arguments : the device name, and
# the network ESSID.
#
# WARNING : This script is executed with root privileges, so beware.
#
case $2 in
# RutilT doesn't support static IPs currently, until it does, if ever, you can
# customize this script to do the job, don't forget to set the IP setting to
# "Automatic" in the matching profile.
# Here is an example on how you could set a static IP for networks "foo" and/or
# "bar".  The two ";;" at the end of the line are required.
# The "#" at the beginning of the line means comment, so you definetely don't
# want to put one on yours.
#    'foo') /sbin/ifconfig $1 192.168.1.2;;
#    'bar') /sbin/ifconfig $1 192.168.1.3;;
# Note that setting the address is usually not enough, the gateway, netmask
# and dns server address should typically be set too. Have a look at "ifconfig"
# man page and your distribution documentation.
#
# WARNING : Always put your static settings above this line.
# No known essid, fallback on DHCP  but first kill any previously running
# dhcp client :
    *) if [ -e /sbin/dhclient ]; then
           kill `ps -o pid= -C"dhclient $1"`
           exec /sbin/dhclient $1
       else
           kill `ps -o pid= -C"dhcpcd $1"`
           exec /sbin/dhcpcd $1
       fi;;
esac
  

Follow the instructions in the INSTALL file in the extracted RutilT directory.

Now when you run RutilT, you should be able to configure your wireless connection and set up WPA.

[edit] See also

• Draft Specs for how a GNOME Wireless Network tool should work

Wireless diagnostic tools are available in portage to help diagnose problems, sniff traffic or scan for access points:

• kwifimanager
• wifi-radar
• knetworkmanager (requires the xeffects-overlay from layman)

There aren't too many programs available for wireless profile management. But here is a small list to try

• gtkwifi
• gwifiapplet
• kwifimanager
• NetworkManager: Gnome Live - Gentoo NetworkManager Tips[2]
• wifi-radar