Frustrated by the fact that Ubuntu doesn’t ship with NetApplet or NetworkManager? Me too! In the true open source spirit, I’ve chosen to get off my ass actually do something about it. Behold, the first screenshot of PyWifiApplet. This little bugger sits on your gnome panels and tells you what network you’re connected to. It’s as simple as just pulling up a menu to switch networks. Can it get much easier? Well, yeah, it could detect the network switch automagically, which is probably the next task.
Sittin in the Panel
Configuring the Applet
Unfortunately, it’s going to be a few more days until I get a chance to clean up this thing and release it. It makes use of the very handy pywifi and the python bindings for dbus which allow communication to the server process that watches the network configuration. I think it might be a little debian specific right now, my goal is to change that in the near future.
On a related Ubuntu note, I opened up my mail today to find that I had received a package from Switzerland. Thinking it was Anthrax, I was tempted to have my wife open it, but she refused. I was pleased to see a nice stack of Ubuntu CDs. I’ll go to the LUG meeting in a few weeks and give them away there.