A wicd wifi utility

Filed in archive Utilities on July 31, 2007

I have been bragging about how easy it is to use wifi on my Mac compared with Linux (or even Windows) - just set the Location and boom! Your network adapters are activated/deactivated, IP address and gateway are set, etc. I use only one pair of IP addresses for my DNS regardless of where I am connected (try OpenDNS) so this is not an issue.

With Linux, I have found a couple of friends struggling to configure their wifi connections. One colleague was using a bleeding edge Linux distribution version and had a difficult time connecting to my router because WPA was not supported out of the box. Argh! Anyway, that is for another story.

Setting up your wifi connection should be a cinch specially with a wickedly cool tool called wicd! Some of its features are:

- automatically connect at boot - no user intervention required, even for encrypted networks

- keeps network keys in root accesible only (600) files (unencrypted, however)

- automatically selects between static IP addresses and DHCP on a per network basis

- encryption (template based): WPA 1/2, WEP, LEAP, TTLS, EAP and PEAP

Try it out. And oh, it works with your wired network connections as well. :)