I’ve tried using NM, but found it really annoying – I had a CDMA modem, which I only managed to get working with… wvdial 🙂

And after that I was unable to setup the VPN through NM because of its state control – it thought there’s no network connection at all!!

After that, I moved all the network manipulation to the cmdline tools. Used PON for pptp (really cool, automatically restores connection on breaks), and even tried to use iwconfig 🙂 – for week or about this.

After that, used pon for vpn, wvdial for cdma and wifi-radar for wi-fi. Was happy 🙂

Wicd (contrary to its name) also has some limited support for wired networking (although I had to fall back to the command line, but this wasn’t a problem since configuration of wired interfaces is easier from the command line / I’m more familiar with the tools).

One thing which network manager has going for it, and I didn’t see in either of the alternatives, is the integration with other networking related stuff like PPPoE or OpenVPN.