[wplug] choosing a wireless AP via nice GUI control?

[Rick Reynolds]

Patrick Wagstrom wrote:

>On Fri, 2005-06-24 at 11:19 -0400, Rick Reynolds wrote:
>  
>
>>I'm running Debian (Sarge still, going to jump to Etch this weekend) on 
>>a laptop.  I've got the wireless working great.  I run wireless in my 
>>house with a WEP key in place, but most of my friends' wireless networks 
>>are wide open.  So when I go to their houses, I end up having to drop to 
>>a command line so I can enter a "iwconfig eth1 enc off" command, then 
>>rerun "dhclient eth1" to get an IP address, etc., sometimes running an 
>>"ifdown / ifup" cycle.
>>
>>Is there a nice GUI tool that will just show me the wireless networks 
>>that are available and let me pick one (prompting for passkey if 
>>necessary), ala Win XP?  I feel like I'm working in the dark ages on my 
>>high-tech Latitude D800.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Rick Reynolds
>>    
>>
>
>I use Wifi Radar[1] just fine under Ubuntu.  It's pretty straight
>forward and doesn't have a lot of dependencies.  The new hotness is
>NetworkManager[2], but it's loaded with dependencies and is primarily
>supported on SuSE and RedHat.
>
>--Patrick
>
>[1] http://www.bitbuilder.com/wifi_radar/
>[2] http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/
>  
>

Thanks.  I've got Wifi Radar working on my Debian system now (I think).  
I'll have to test it some over the next few days in different areas.

It took a little massaging to get it installed correctly on regular 
Debian.  I got the .deb install package from the website, but it didn't 
install a wifi-radar.sh script that has the sudo command in it.  And the 
instructions on the website referred to using consolehelper to get an 
icon working -- something Debian doesn't have.  But I've managed to get 
it work alright.

Thanks again,
Rick Reynolds
-- 
 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us 
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- 
Galileo Galilei