The pros and "conns" of Intel's ConnMan for Linux

"NetworkManager was created by Red Hat and is used today in Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and many other distros. It provides a background service that manages devices and connections; it also has a user interface front-end that is accessible through the desktop notification area. The functionality provided by the NetworkManager background service is exposed through D-Bus, which makes it easy for third-party software developers to get information about connection availability and network device status.

"The NetworkManager user interface gives users the ability to toggle connection status, select wireless networks, and perform other basic configuration tasks without having to use the command line or to manually edit configuration files. There are several custom NetworkManager user interfaces, including one for KDE that is built with Plasma. NetworkManager supports ethernet, WiFi, mobile broadband, and VPN connections.

"ConnMan was created by Marcel Holtmann of Intel's Open Source Technology Center. Holtmann is probably best known for his works as the maintainer of BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth stack. During a presentation at the Linux Collaboration Summit, he explained ConnMan and discussed some of the problems he encountered with NetworkManager that compelled him to build an alternative."

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