Bug 433951

Summary: plasma systemmonitor network device sensors should actually show the device and not the network
Product: [Applications] plasma-systemmonitor Reporter: Till Schäfer <till2.schaefer>
Component: generalAssignee: KSysGuard Developers <ksysguard-bugs>
Status: REOPENED ---    
Severity: normal CC: ahiemstra, kde, nate, plasma-bugs
Priority: NOR    
Version: 5.23.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Gentoo Packages   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: example widget configured to show wifi stats (connected to eduroam)

Description Till Schäfer 2021-03-04 12:26:28 UTC
Created attachment 136366 [details]
example widget configured to show wifi stats (connected to eduroam)

When configuring the plasma systemmonitor to display network device statistics, the list of devices is actually a list of connected networks (using Networkmanager). 

E.g., connected to eduroam over the device wlp4s0, the device listed as sensor is eduroam. 

This has several sideeffects / drawbacks, such as: 
1. When connected to no network, no device is shown in the sensors selection. Thus is is impossible to configure the systemmonitor as long you are disconnected. 
2. the network name info is useless (e.g., "eduroma network name: eduroam", see attachment)

Operating System: Gentoo Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.79.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.10.18-gentoo
OS Type: 64-bit
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
Memory: 15.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Comment 1 David Redondo 2021-03-05 08:09:41 UTC
>1. When connected to no network, no device is shown in the sensors selection. Thus is is impossible to configure the systemmonitor as long you are disconnected. 

This has nothing to do with that, the name is just the name.

>2. the network name info is useless (e.g., "eduroma network name: eduroam", see attachment)

While not useful in your setup, other chart setups can benefit from it, for example the ones on the homepage of plasma-systemmonitor with "Group sensors based on total sensors" enabled
Comment 2 Till Schäfer 2021-03-05 08:54:07 UTC
1. I have opened a separate issue for this: Bug 433988
2. I would still argue, that the typical user would like to select an interface from the sensors list (maybe enhanced by also showing the type, e.g., wifi / wired) and not the network I am connected to. Actually, the category is currently called devices and not networks. This is also the behaviour of the sensor, i.e., it is assigned on an interface level and not the network level. Furthermore, what kind of info would you display if the device is disconnected (see point 1), which would make the shown information non-uniform for the connected/disconnected state.

What do you think? Feel free to close again. Just reopening it until the discussion is settled.