My qubes networking consists of firewalls, proxyvms, and netvms (WiFi and ethernet), and I want to know if it’s possible to just use the underlying dependencies of NetworkManager (e.g. wpa_supplicant) instead. Would this break Qubes networking?
Secondly, if not, what exactly is hooked into NM that Qubes Networking depends on?
I’m not talking about vanilla NM stuff, like the applet or GUI, just that core functionality remains, like being able to configure a qube to connect via a VPN and (assuming the VPN os properly configured) it gets internet.
You don’t need the network manager for network to work in qubes.
For example, you can use a minimal template where there is no network manager preinstalled and you only need to install the qubes-core-agent-networking package for network to work.
Minimal templates — Qubes OS Documentation
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Yes indeed. I am now working on removal of NM from liteqube wired configuration.
Okay, great. I had read in the docs that you needed qubes-core-agent-network-manager for the NetVM, so thould this be updated to reflect that it is recommended and not required?
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I think you’re right: it could be more clear.
The packages listed under Fedora and the ones under Debian are not consistent too.
But the priority should be low because of this warning:
The minimal templates are intended only for advanced users. Most things will not work out-of-the-box, and you will have to fix them yourself. If you are not prepared to do a lot of reading, searching, learning, and troubleshooting, then you should instead stick to the standard templates, which are perfectly suitable for the vast majority of users. In particular, if you are new to Qubes, you should not attempt to use minimal templates until you have gained more experience.