Bug#645656: gnome-core: please re-soften the network-manager-gnome dependency

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Package: gnome-core
Version: 1:3.0+6
Followup-For: Bug #645656

Hi,

I am also voting for softening the dependency of gnome/gnome-core since the
hard dependency is a problem for corporate environments.

We have deployed Debian on ~100 clients and we're using a static network
configuration for several reasons:

1. It's not possible to completely disable user changes to network manager.
   While it is possible to prevent the user from changing any of the connections
   via PolicyKit, there doesn't seem to be any way from preventing a user
   from disconnecting a connection in Network Manager. This is not acceptable
   for the desktops on our network since the clients always have to be
   accessible externally and we're using NFS shares on the clients, especially
   the home directories. So, if a user disconnects in Network Manager, the
   client computer becomes unusable.

   Also, Network Manager is usually started too late during bootup so
   that services like NTP, NIS and autofs fail.

2. While it is possible to prevent Network Manager from managing local interfaces
   by providing a configuration for these interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces,
   Network Manager will insist that there is no network connection and thus
   applications like Pidgin and Evolution will claim that the computer is
   not connected to the internet. The only way to solve this problem is to
   stop Network Manager through /etc/init.d/network-manager stop.

So there are definitely reasons why the hard dependency on the package
network-manager should be softened unless the aforementioned problems are
solved.

Also, it would be nice to be able to prevent Network Manager from starting
by adding an appropriate setting to /etc/default/network-manager.

Regards,

Adrian