KDE4: Installing and configuring Network Manager

I am really frustrated by the recent wave of negative reviews for KDE4.1 rc1. I had really hoped to try it out but unfortunately being a ubuntu Gutsy user, the upgrade path is a little rocky.

Anyways, one major feature I missed badly was the network-manager for KDE which apparently was missing in the default KDE4 setup. Here, let me show you how to install and get the network manager running.


1. Fire up your terminal and install kmix and network-manager for kde via apt.
Note, the network-manager package is a kde3 release which still works well in KDE4.

$ apt-get install kmix-kde4
$ apt-get intall network-manager-kde


2.To run network-manager-kde, simply run this via terminal or using Alt + F2

$ knetworkmanager


3. To make sure kmix and knetworkmanager launch at startup, simply create a new Autorun file as follows (use your favorite text editor)

$ gedit ~/.kde4/Autostart/kmix


$ kwrite ~/.kde4/Autostart/kmix



4. Add these following lines into it and save the file.

#!/bin/bash
kmix; dcop kmix kmix-mainwindow;#1 hide
knetworkmanager;


5. Setup the required permissions

$ sudo chmod u+x ~/.kde4/Autostart/kmix


6. Great you are done now. knetworkmanager should appear in your taskbar on startup.