Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends

[Russ Allbery]

Michael Biebl <biebl at debian.org> writes:

> Also, as an alternative if you can't use network-manager for whatever
> reasons,  you can install gnome-core and disable network-manager. This
> is as simple as

> "update-rc.d network-manager disable"

[...]

> As for the situation where nm is installed but doesn't manage the
> network connection: This is actually extremely confusing to users as
> various bug reports have shown.

Are these two points consistent?  In other words, *is* it as simple as
running:

    update-rc.d network-manager disable

and installing wicd or something else, or is that configuration "extremely
confusing" to users?  Or did you mean something different by the last
paragraph?

If there's a clean way to disable network-manager, I think that's a
reasonable alternative to either creating yet another meta-package or
arguing about Depends vs. Recommends in gnome-core.  But there seems to be
a lot of debate over this point.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>