Some time ago, in the Guadec-es in Coruña, there was an interesting meeting to talk about interesting enhancement in Gnome desktop. It was mainly centered in i18n issues, but I talked about the way other platforms work in network APIs.
Briefly, I missed a way to know about network status and manage connections, as other platforms do (for example, we get this kind of API in Microsoft Windows related SDK with Connection Manager API. The same applies to power management.
But now there’s an interesting work to face this issue. If Network manager and Power manager DBUS message providers get more or less standarised in Linux distros, we’ll get an standard API to do this kind of use cases:
- Know if we’re connected to the internet
- Bring up the default network connection to the internet if it’s shut down. (Useful for devices like palms or mobile phones or even PC’s with analog modem internet). Maybe with a standard dialog in Gnome.
- Some knowledge about the network status.
- Know if the PC or device is plugged, and then decide if our application wants to save power or not.
It seems these managers, and their use of DBUS, are the way to go. Good luck!