A new version of NetworkManager – used by most Linux distributions (including Ubuntu) to manage wired and wireless network connections – was released this week.

Veth configuration in the CLI UI

NetworkManager 1.50 won’t be included in Ubuntu 24.10 (that ships with v1.48) but I think some of the changes it makes may be worth knowing about all the same.

Notably, NetworkManager 1.50 now formally deprecates support for dhclient in favour of its own internal DHCP client. The former is now no longer be built “…unless explicitely (sic) enabled, and will be removed in a future release.”

Will this have a major issue? Unlikely; NetworkManager began defaulting to its own DHCP client as of the v1.20 release back in 2019.

Other changes in NetworkManager 1.50 include:

  • New timeout option for connectivity checking
  • Configuring virtual ethernet (veth) interfaces in nmtui now supported
  • Multiple gateways are now supported for a single network in ndisc
  • Configuration for channel-width in AP mode for Wi-Fi connections
  • Ability to reapply VLANs of a bridge port
  • Retry hostname resolution if it fails
  • Revert to using sysctl ipv6.conf.default for ip6-privacy
  • No longer writes offensive terms into keyfiles

The latter bullet is part of Red Hat;s ‘conscious language effort’. NetworkManager already stopped using “offensive terms” (it can still read them if present) and this release completes the task by ensuring such words are no longer newly written in to keyfiles.

Finally, when NetworkManager 1.50 looks up the system hostname using reverse DNS lookup of addresses configured in interfaces, it now takes in account the content of /etc/hosts. A hostname management diagram helps explain how it works.

More details on this update on the NetworkManager blog.

Usually I end a “new release out” type news report with instructions on how to get it (or when you can) but here, really, there’s no need: NetworkManager is a core OS component. Only those skilled to tackle it, should – the rest of us will should wait for our distro to adopt it.