Unable to connect to wireless internet(wifi) through KDE plasma desktop

Question

I installed the KDE plasma desktop through Ubuntu software center. I am on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.

After the install, I'm unable to connect to my WiFi connection in the KDE session. But I can connect to my WiFi perfectly through GNOME session. I've tried a lot without much success. Also KDE doesn't store my password correctly and keeps prompting for authorization again and again.

• Some of the things that I noticed:

  1. Network is detected, Network name and strength is also displayed. Other characteristics also appear properly.
  2. When the credentials are supplied, it accepts them and continually displays the message "Setting network address". However this process never succeeds.
  3. At this stage the password is repeatedly asked many times but the connection is never established.

• Some of the other things that I did:

  1. I have also tried other things like restarting my modem and the computer. That didn't work.
  2. I tried to restart nm-applet and KNetworkManager. That didn't work either.
  3. ifconfig display all my interfaces and Mac addresses correctly.

Since it's working fine GNOME the drivers are fine. This is sure a KDE specific issue. Other threads related to this on the interwebs don't offer much information either.

Please share a solution for this.

Solution

Try wicd

1. To install

   sudo apt-get install wicd
   

2. Then set KDE to use wicd on: SystemSettings → Information Sources

Comments

[Luis Alvarado]

If you come from ANY desktop (gnome, old kde 3.x, windows) you will notice that KDE 4.x management for wireless (and even wired) connections is... well let me sugar coated..not good. For example forum.kde.org/… you can also find several of my posts there dating several months back (and some bug reports) about how horrible and hard it is to work with the network in KDE. It is NOT user friendly in any way, might be user friendly for an octupus but not a human. The problem you are having is not with the modem or network card.

[Luis Alvarado]

The problem is knetworkmanager and how it "handles" whatever it is that it handles. Lets put a simple example (Am a KDE Fan before i start as you can see in the KDE Forum. But i hate to not be neutral) when you want to share a wifi connection, in gnome you would click on the network icon, select Create New Wireless Conection and share it from there. Super Easy. In KDE you need to pray. you need to find a rabbits foot or something since i have tried anything you can think of. Anyway you are much better of using the console. Like ifconfig, dhclient in KDE than using the horrible knetwork.