Replace knetworkmanager with wicd on KDE4

WICD is a python based network manager. I first started hacking around with it on my Sharp Zaurus, running Zubuntu. In the meantime, I've updated to Kubuntu 8.10 which implements KDE4. The knetworkmanager app, which in KDE3 was lightyears ahead of Gnome's networkmanager for quite some time, has become a horrid completely unusable hunk of crap in KDE4. 

I can't even imagine how someone thought it was a good idea to change it. It stopped using kwallet, which meant that all of my current wireless keys had to be reentered. On top of that, the interface changed, requiring more mouse clicks and extra hassle. Then on top of that, it hardly ever shows the available wireless networks properly. I've heard that there is a lot more work being put into a new KDE4 version of knetworkmanager. I just hope they don't base it off of the current version. It is beyond crappy.

So here I was using a perfectly good wireless manager on my PDA and a perfectly crappy wireless manager on my laptop. Now who is the idiot? So today I switched to using WICD. I don't know why it took this long to get my butt in gear on this but now that I've done it, I'm very happy with my wireless management in KDE4 now.

Here is a "mockup" of the new KDE4 network manager. Its looking good!

Here is my WICD client in action