iwd: improving on wpa_supplicant

[Head_on_a_Stick]

The iNet Wireless Daemon (iwd) project aims to provide a comprehensive Wi-Fi connectivity solution for Linux based devices. The core goal of the project is to optimize resource utilization: storage, runtime memory and link-time costs. This is accomplished by not depending on any external libraries and utilises features provided by the Linux Kernel to the maximum extent possible. The result is a self-contained environment that only depends on the Linux Kernel and the runtime C library.

https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/

The iwd package can be used as a drop-in replacement for wpa_supplicant, just create a file at /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi_backend.conf with this content:

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[device]
wifi.backend=iwd

Then reboot, iwd should be running instead of wpa_supplicant.

It is also possible to run iwd with systemd-networkd or even as a standalone wirlesss networking solution for the versions in Debian testing/unstable, see my fdn thread for more on this: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=144729

[azrielle]

Be nice if it would work as a replacement for the never to be sufficiently damned connman in antiX 19.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

The version in Debian testing/unstable can be used as a complete replacement for both ConnMan & NetworkManager, I've backported it to Debian stable & MX-19:

https://software.opensuse.org//download ... ackage=iwd

See my Debian forums thread for a quick how-to.

The version in Debian stable can be used as a backend for ConnMan (instead of wpa_supplicant) but unfortunately the only guide I can find uses systemd: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co ... supplicant

Perhaps somebody could look at that and make it work under sysvinit or runit.

[jeffreyC]

Would it be possible to backport this to MX-18.3?

Currently I am holding off on MX-19 until the first point release, Xfce 4.14 is too new and buggy for me.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Would it be possible to backport this to MX-18.3?

It's not trivial for me, a backported debhelper version is required and I don't use Debian stretch any more so I couldn't test the packages anyway.

Perhaps if you open a request thread the MX devs could backport it, I'm sure they've already solved the debhelper-compat issue.

[Stevo]

We already have debhelper 12 as standard in MX 17/18 to make it easier to backport packages from upstream, but very few packages so far in upstream Debian actually require a newer debhelper for a successful build. Usually, you can change

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dephelper-compat (= 12)

to

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debhelper (>= 10)

in debian/control, then restore the debian/compat file with the contents

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10

to revert back to the standard Stretch debhelper 10. Let me see if it works with iwd.

[Stevo]

Yes, no problem building both on vanilla Buster and Stretch chroots with debhelper 10, using pbuilder. Jessie builds fail, even with a backported debhelper 10, because its rst2man package is too old. Let's see if a backported rst2man helps.