i was installing vpnc related packages to test out a cisco vpn connection. i ended up installing networkmanager in the process and then was very unpleasantly surprised to find that my wireless connection no longer functioned. from googling it seems that networkmanager and mandriva’s net applet contend with each other. and from this blog:  http://artipc10.vub.ac.be/wordpress/mandriva/networkmanager-in-mandriva.html, it seems that you have to set one or the other to the dominate role. seems like something interesting to mess around with sometime. right now, i was too irritated with not having a working wireless connection so i removed networkmanager and was able to connect again.

side note: vpnc for my cisco vpn connection did work. rdesktop currently doesn’t support network level authentication so i’ll need to disable that.