WhiteTower:

> Of course the hardware doesn't matter

I wasn't talking about just hardware; I was saying that different OS's shouldn't make creating a network harder - notice "Windows" and "NetBSD"? Not hardware ;)

> but Windows XP has a nice "one-liner" itself - the Network Connection Wizard where very little information is needed by the user

It's not the information needed I'm talking about; it's that in Windows you have go to Start, something, Control Panel, something, Network, something, something, Interface name, something, IP address, something, ok, something, reboot (I don't know if you still have to reboot but my last experience you do).

> and the OS does all the dirty work "rewiring" its internals, resulting in a fully functioning wireless network

What dirty work? Configuring the actual physical network card with the information given? Yes, well UNIX does that too and I'm glad of it; I don't want to have an 'OS' being a nice little program that accepts machine code and executes it (the code must, of course, return back to the program that accepts machine code; it couldn't be as high-tech as doing that for you; no-no)

But I think you didn't mean that, but I can't see what dirty work there is; basic network configuration isn't complex (well, to me at least).

> in the same way that a true OS user would do, let's say, in Un*x :)

Well, things like that exist in the *nix world too; they come in Linux distros such as SuSE and Ubuntu. And of course, theres always dhcp (I dislike dhcp but I think the principle of dhcp is nice; I sort of like IPv6's autoconfiguration).

But, basically, my view is that you don't need a big program to do some basic configuration work; greater complexity does NOT make something easier or simpler.

I'd be intriguied to learn why you need a "Wizard" to configure a network; are people scared of the shell because it's (typically) black and white?