Comment 31 for bug 339313

I attempted to get the "Network manager" plasmoid to work with my wep shared key ASCII passphrase and, like the others here, it would not despite repeated efforts. I then "nuked" the Kubuntu install and installed Ubuntu Jaunty--the network settings worked with the Live CD, so I installed it on the hard drive and...it no longer could be set up to work there,either.

Finally, I reinstalled Kubuntu, plugged into my router and downloaded WICD--which worked the first time without problems. WICD also automatically recognized several of the settings that the Kubuntu Network Manager did not.

This has been such a long-standing problem through multiple releases, why not replace the network manager with WICD--at least until you folks get a clue about what is going wrong with network manager?

Shipping code that is known to be broken in a system which is ostensibly designed for new Linux users to find easy to use is disgraceful, frankly, when there is at least one existing solution that seems to be better.

An alternative might be to have an installation choice to install one or the other so no one would have to search on a wired connection for the solution.