Raspberry PI OS Bookworm. Does it support multiple desktops/workspaces?

Yes it does!

However, one word of caution. There is a strong tendency for the OS to overwrite the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf with zeros. I've seen this with bullseye too. I suspect it is some weird security measure to try to stop tinkering.

The solution with bullseye is to copy that file not to /etc/wpa_supplicant but whilst the SD card is still in the PC copy it to the boot partition. The Pi then copies this into the correct place at boot up and marks it as valid in some way to prevent overwrite. I've not tried this yet on bookworm, that's up next...

Bob.

Not happening here but I do note that nmcli says wlan0 is unmanaged.

Oh dear, replying to myself....

As it's unmanaged by NetworkManagaer, then it's being left alone. That's just fine for what this PiZeroW is used for. I have another PiZeroW with the same release of software that I'll play with and will add wlan0 to NetworkManager's grasp so I can see what it does (if anything).

ifupdown still exists in bookworm. There is no need to break anything to use it.

isc-dhcp-client does seems to be abandonware, but ifupdown supports at least two other DHCP clients.

Further testing just, has revealed that bookworm doesn't seem to copy the wpa_supplicant.conf file from boot partition at boot up like bullseye did. The only way I've found to get that file there is via ethernet and in my case samba.

Upon reboot, sometimes the wpa_supplicant.conf files gets overwritten with zeros and sometimes not. I've no idea why.

Bob.

If by Deb you mean Debian, it still defaults, in version 12, to using /etc/network/interfaces and ifupdown for network management.

The Raspberry Pi foundation makes changes to Debian and calls it the Raspberry Pi OS. Or Raspbian, earlier.

Just 'cos of this thread, I've been frigging around with bookworm lite on a PiB+. After getting the firmware for my dongle - took a long time to compile - TP-Link AC600 wireless Realtek RTL8811AU [Archer T2U Nano], I just did: nmcli d wifi connect "myssid" password "mypassword" ifname wlan0

It survives a reboot. My wpa_supplicant.conf file stays unchanged (and unneeded). The bit about it not being copied from /boot/ is documented here:

I found Jeff Geerling's blog handy:

BTW Bookworm is (subjectively) faster than Bullseye on a PiB+

In my case I had working Buster and upgraded in situ to Bullseye then Bookworm on a headless PiZeroW. The legacy network setup was moved and the automatic power up connection to Wifi stayed active. Then a recent update to Bookworm changed NetworkManager and Wifi was broken. The fix is as described early.

I've been playing with nmcli on a Pi with some USB Wifi dongles and have played with nmcli d wifi connect.... and yes, it works and survives reboots. My built wlan0 is currently unmanaged by NM.

I'm thinking a clean install of Bookworm would have put wlan0 under NM control. But as it was using the old style setup it was left as is (and working). The later NM update didn't / couldn't cope with that style of setup, failed and broke the old style network setup. What I've done (which I found somewhere online) works and leaves wlan0 outside of NM control.

I'm just considering whether to leave as it as it is working or to do a sudo nmcli dev set wlan0 managed yes, remove the files I added and let NM manage it from now on. Probably the best course of action in the long run as it's possible and probable a future NM update may break things again.

Are you saying that you get a wi-fi dongle to work with just one command?

Wow, I'll try this out later.

Well at least my testing was correct then. :-)

I'll have a read of that, thanks.

Recently I've been using secondhand pi3 devices because they have wi-fi built in and that just worked from raspi-config on bookworm.

Then I saw this thread and thought I'd try a pi2 with a wi-fi dongle and I couldn't get it to work certainly not as I'd done on bullseye.

Clever fold on here told me a way to get it going and that did work.

Later I'll try your suggestion and see if that works for me. I just don't know how you find out this stuff. :-)

Thanks for the suggestion.

Bob.

Not exactly a single command <g> as I had to download and compile the drivers for the USB dongle. That took ages! But I got both 5GHz and 2.4 GHz (80211ac). I'll try out a more simple dongle (80211n) later today.

Mainly, Jeff Geerling's blog (see above)

It seems (to me) that NetworkManager uses dhcpcd (not dhclient) internally, but I could be wrong. And wpa_supplicant seems to come into it somewhere, but doesn't use seem to use /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf 'wpa_cli status'

Another problem I found with RPiB+/Bookworm lite is the overscan settings. I have:

# Disable compensation for displays with overscan disable_overscan=1 overscan_left=50 overscan_right=20 overscan_top=25 overscan_bottom=20

which works until the (new) video driver takes over

Solution: comment out the new driver viz:

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver #dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d #max_framebuffers=2

I switched from wlan0 unmanaged by NM to managed and working. It was reasonably straightforward.

sudo nmtui rather than nmcli to setup the profile info and wifi password. I'm happy using nmcli but I thought I try the "GUI" version as many will be happier using that.

At first I could not make NM manage wlan0. This was because in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf the ifupdown section was set to managed=false and so I changed that to managed-true.

Reboot and wlan0 is controlled by NM and connects on power up.

This was straightforward because I used a USB ethernet dongle to control the Pi rather than using the wlan0 device I was reconfiguring.

nmtui is much nicer to work with. On everything I run that uses NetworkManager, I make sure nmtui is installed.

The Pi 4 and later use Wayland (perpetually unfinished and unfit for purpose windowing system) so LXDE isn't used. Try switching back to X11 and all will be well.

---druck

Overscan is yet another thing the Wayland developers can't be bother supporting, so no longer work.

There is no need to stop using the driver, just switch back to using X11.

---druck

I'll do some experiments. Glad to see SOMETHING other than the weird /etc/NetworkManager stuff might work !

Another 'cure' for the overwrite issue would be to write an on-boot script that physically copies a GOOD copy to WPA_Supplicant fairly early on. Not as elegant, but then you also don't have to tamper with /boot

Such a pity though that after ALL these years we STILL have to find ways to fix/break the normal OS just to do simple - but very important - stuff like this.

I have looked into the BSDs - including the ARM version of FreeBSD.

ONE odd issue, but kinda important to me & org, is that they do NOT seem to do SMB2 or SMB3 ... just the insecure and long-defunct SMB1. It's far more a pain in the ass to create shares or use them in BSD (and no, FORGET NFS ... the Real World is 95% Winders with Linux/Unix as servers or 'smart devices'.

In some ways the BSDs are "better", solid, well thought-out, NOT prone to stupid pointless changes in basic functions. In a few ways though they are WELL behind the curve.

Maybe it's a 6/Half-Dozen thing ?

As for Linux, I fear Canonical and its "philosophy" are gaining too much traction. I dumped the 'Buntu's a few years back because of that - but now even Mother Deb seems to to be 'contaminated'. There's a systemd rebellion faction ... maybe a "Pure Deb" rebellion faction is also needed ?

I'm gonna write a py app for it ... already know how it'll work. Just the usual basics, easy to go back and forth in a particular networking def.

DID post templates for what's in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and how to use nmcli to at least create (/register?) the useless base templates. Then you copy/paste my examples into them and make yer specific tweaks.

Liked the old way, indeed even OLDER way, a lot better. Far less mystery and BS.

It's all easier if you are making a GUI-based system ... but without GUI tools (and you have to deliberately install one in Bookworm and run it as root) it's suddenly a real pain to do static IPs and such.

Yep ! :-)

I've been hearing hype about Wayland for many years now. IMHO it's still not up to snuff and more stupid than X11 and may always be thus. And, as mentioned here, it KILLS a lot of useful stuff that's WELL documented for X11.

No thanks.

Sometimes "improvements" just AREN'T. Don't break what ain't broke.

I do practical stuff with Pi's and do NOT wanna rewrite big apps, or half the OS, just to make things work straight-up.

Hate to rec more distros, but perhaps the Pi people need to consider their target audience and make their OWN, straight-up, version of Deb. Go back to Buster or even Stretch and proceed from there.