Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual page 182

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers several ways of integrating laptops into existing
operating environments:
NetworkManager
NetworkManager is especially tailored for mobile networking on laptops. It provides
a means to easily and automatically switch between network environments or dif-
ferent types of networks, such as wireless LAN and ethernet. NetworkManager
supports WEP and WPA-PSK encryption in wireless LANs. It also supports dial-
up connections (with smpppd). Both desktop environments (GNOME and KDE)
include a front-end for NetworkManager. For more information about the desktop
applets, see
Section 23.5, "Using GNOME NetworkManager Applet"
Table 14.1
My computer...
is a laptop
is sometimes attached to different networks
provides network services (such as DNS or DHCP)
only uses a static IP address
Use the YaST tools to configure networking whenever NetworkManager should
not handle network configuration.
SCPM
SCPM (system configuration profile management) allows storage of arbitrary
configuration states of a system into a kind of "snapshot" called a profile. Profiles
can be created for different situations. They are useful when a system is operating
in changing environments (home network, office network). It is always possible
to switch between profiles. To get SCPM up and running on your system, install
the package scpm, enable SCPM using the YaST Profile Management module and
configure the users that should be allowed to switch profiles without the need of
entering the root password. Determine whether profile changes should survive a
system reboot or whether they should be discarded upon shutdown. Make sure all
resource groups (i.e. services like network and printer, for example) are active.
Proceed to creating actual profiles using the scpm command line tool. Create
168 Administration Guide
Section 23.4, "Using KDE NetworkManager Widget"
Use Cases for NetworkManager
(page 324) and
(page 325).
Use NetworkManager
Yes
Yes
No
No