netplan vs NetworkManager on Ubuntu 18.04 and above

Question

What is the concept of renderer in a netplan configuration file?

What practical difference does it make between choosing a networkd and a NetworkNamager renderer?

Can anyone (in the second case) proceed with nmtui or nmcli?

Solution

The difference the renderer makes, is the decision to run either systemd-networkd or NetworkManager. This distinction is identified by a file in /etc/netplan/*.yaml.

networkd is normally used in server installations, where the network environment is fairly static.

NetworkManager is normally used in desktop installations, and was used in all prior versions of Ubuntu. NetworkManager is easier to use in environments where network requirements change a lot... like in wireless networking. nmcli/nmtui/etc are NetworkManager commands.

To use NetworkManager, your /etc/netplan/*.yaml file should look like:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

sudo netplan generate

sudo netplan apply

reboot

Comments

[Jiří Liška]

so if I opt for renderer: NetworkManager, then I can run nmcli / nmtui to configure my network? what if I run nm and provide configurations that are conflicting with the ones in the netplan .yml file? which one (the config entered via nm or the yaml settings) prevails?

[Boris Hamanov]

@pkaramol once you specify renderer: NetworkManager you're done with all .yaml files, and all normal NetworkManager commands can be used. All conflict or error scripts will need to be rectified via NM.