Since version 0.9.6 of NetworkManager there is a possibility for scanning wireless networks on demand. It would be very nice to see a button utilizing that function. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. none
I do not think this will be "nice". I am trying to remove widgets from the plasmoid, so if this will be implement I will do it in the kcm module instead of the plasmoid. Scanning on demand is more like a workaround to bugs in drivers or NetworkManager itself, it is not usually necessary.
*** Bug 308142 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
But the problems is I don't meet same problem on gnome's network manager applet, the wireless I need to find always appear while I click on the menu, while it's not the case for kde one. So I wonder gnome use some manual way to trigger the scan. BTW, scan as an button may be useful on mobile for powersaving, I still see scan button on android 4..
Plasma NM receives the wifi networks reported by NetworkManager, if it does not send any network it is likely to be a problem in NetworkManager or the driver. Plasma NM does not talk to the wifi card, so it cannot force scanning and only NetworkManager 0.9.6 supports manual wifi scanning as far as I know, so the problem should still happen with nm-applet < 0.9.6. Mobile broadband scanning is very slow (near 2 minutes time), in this particular case manual scanning makes sense, but not for wifi. Anyway, wpa_supplicant will keep scanning even if we add a button in Plasma NM, so the question if it will save power or not is irrelevant to Plasma NM. Plasma NM does not control wpa_supplicant, NetworkManager does, so if you want to be able to stop automatic scanning that is something to be implemented in NetworkManager, not in Plasma NM.
This should be closed.