An unexpected problem hit me with Mint. I never would have thought that a system which found drivers for a whole bunch of devices on its own would be unable to set up a simple PPPoE connection.
Here’s what happened: I connected to a local network that provides internet via PPPoE. I tried to configure it through NetworkManager — no luck. Eventually got it working with the console tool pppoeconf, but for some reason NetworkManager then started saying my network card was no longer managed by it. (A few reboots and a reset of /etc/network/interfaces later, it started managing it again.)
Still, it left a bad taste. And how am I supposed to explain to my wife that she needs to turn on the laptop, open a terminal, type sudo pon adsl, and enter her password again?…
These technologies have been around for years and years, yet everything is still so clunky. And NetworkManager shows no logs at all. It just won’t connect — end of story.
I still need to set up VPN — and I’m already dreading it. On top of that, Synaptic broke and refuses to launch. Looks like it’s time for Karmic Koala. I’ve always liked the letter K :)