I'm generally not a fan of NetworkManager on the machines I deal with, but I do wind up dealing with it at the command line level every so often, most recently for setting up a WireGuard client on my work laptop. There was a time when it felt that NetworkManager was the inevitable future of networking on Linux even on servers, but fortunately systemd-networkd has mostly made that go away. Still, systemd-networkd has limitations and isn't as comprehensive as NetworkManager, NetworkManager is the face of networking on a lot of Linux configurations, and someday I may be forced to deal with NetworkManager on a regular basis.

(Fedora keeps threatening to remove the ifup and ifdown scripts that drive my DLS PPPoE link, and systemd-networkd doesn't currently have support for PPPoE.)

All of this leaves me feeling that not really knowing even the basics of NetworkManager general concepts and command line usage is a gap in my practical Linux knowledge that matters, and that I should fix. Well, to put it bluntly, it feels like I'm burying my head in the sand. Even if I never really use it, learning the basics of NetworkManager command line usage would give me an informed opinion, instead of my current mostly uninformed one.

The low impact approach to learning NetworkManager command line usage would be to explore it on my work laptop, which already uses NetworkManager. I normally use the Cinnamon Network Manager GUI (which is not nm-applet, it turns out), but I could switch to doing my network manipulation through the command line, and also read and try to understand all of the configured connection parameters.

The high impact approach would be to try to set up a version of my home desktop's DSL PPPoE connection in NetworkManager. Many years ago I configured a version of my DSL connection on my laptop, so in theory I could cross-check my NetworkManager flailing against that version (although I should first make sure it still works). As a side benefit, this would leave me prepared for when Fedora carries through its threat to remove ifup and my current DSL PPPoE setup immediately stops working.

(I've written this partly in the hopes of motivating myself into doing some NetworkManager learning, even if I don't manage much.)