A couple of days ago I replaced Gentoo Linux with Kubuntu on my old laptop. I didn’t have the time, and the laptop probably didn’t have the power, to keep compiling every program I wanted to install. As a consequence of the switch, I got to use the nifty new KDE 4 which comes with a little network management applet that looks absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately doesn’t work.

Well, didn’t work. I fixed it, though, by following the suggestions at http://uncleham.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/kubuntu-904-wpapsk-nobroadcast/ — I would detail my procedure here but it’d just be a repeat of what you can find at that link, with a couple of notable differences: (1) my router broadcasts its SSID, and (2) “Connect automatically” works fine for me. No need to reenter the encryption key at every login.

I actually have a hunch about why this worked, and I don’t think it had anything to do with using the “Connect to hidden network” button. When I clicked the button, I made a point of not filling in any configuration settings that I didn’t have to. Checking it over afterwards, the one obvious difference …