NetworkManager 1.6 to Support PKCS#11 Tokens with 802.1x Authentication, More

Development of NetworkManager, the open-source program that lets you detect network connections and configure new ones, continues for the upcoming major 1.6 release. The first two Release Candidate versions of NetworkManager 1.6 are now available for public testing, bringing a whole lot of goodies.

Among the most exciting new features implemented so far, we can mention support for managing MACsec links, which requires wpa_supplicant 2.6 or later to be installed, the ability to detect and configure Web Proxy settings through the PacRunner service, as well as support for the "ipv6.method=shared" option to fetch prefixes for the respective network interface.

Initial support for PKCS#11 tokens with 802.1x authentication has been implemented as well, along with support for systemd-resolved as local DNS forwarder backend. NetworkManager 1.6 will also split the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) into a separate package and support reading of network configurations from the /ru...