NetworkManager 1.42 has already been released and these are its news

Recently se announced the release of the new version of NetworkManager 1.42, which arrives after almost half a year and almost 800 confirmations since NetworkManager 1.40 and in which some quite interesting new features have been added.

For those who are unfamiliar with NetworkManager should know that this is a software utility for simplify the use of networks of computers on linux and other Unix-based operating systems. This utility takes an opportunistic approach to network selection, trying to use the best available connection when outages occur, or when the user moves between wireless networks.

You prefer Ethernet connections over "known" wireless networks. The user is prompted for WEP or WPA keys, as required.

Main new features of NetworkManager 1.42

In that new version of NetworkManager 1.42, it is highlighted that, nmtui gained support for configuring IEEE 802.1X. IEEE 802.1X is an authentication method most commonly used by secure enterprise Wi-Fi networks. Wired networks use IEEE 802.1X to control port access or secure traffic along with MACsec.

In this new version it is possible to change the parameters of the loopback interface and attach a connection profile to it, allowing, for example, to bind an additional IP address to the loopback interface. It behaves very much like a real physical interface with some interesting properties. With loopback interface always guaranteed to exist in an instance, a connection on a loopback interface can be used to specify settings that are always supposed to apply. This includes things like adding an additional IP address or perhaps a DNS server.

Another change that stands out in the new version is that added support for ECMP routing (multiple routes of equal cost), which allows changing the weights of the routes and controlling the flows in the routing multipathing, in which packets can be delivered along multiple paths through different network interfaces bound to different IP addresses.

In addition to this, we can also find that, the ability to use 802.1ad protocol headers is provided (VLAN or QinQ stacking) for VLAN tagging which, unlike the 802.1Q protocol, allows for nested headers and the substitution of multiple VLAN tags in an Ethernet frame.

Of the other changes that stand out from the new version:

• The DNS over TLS server configuration allows you to specify a hostname, not just an IP address.
• Added support for load balancing across bound Ethernet interfaces relative to the source (source load balancing).
• Support for the VTI protocol for IP tunnels has been implemented.
• Removed WEP support from the nmtui utility.

Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it about this new release of Networkmanager you can check the details from the link below.

How to get NetworkManager 1.42?

For those who are interested in being able to obtain this new version you should know that at the moment there are no packages built for Ubuntu or derivatives. So if you want to get this version they must build from their source code.

The link is this.

Although it is a matter of a few days for it to be incorporated into the official Ubuntu repositories for its prompt update.

So if you want, is to wait for the new update to be made available within the official Ubuntu channels, you can check if the update is already available in this link.

As soon as that happens, you can update your list of packages and repos on your system with the help of the following command:

sudo apt update

And to install the new version of NetworkManager 1.32 on your system, just run any of the following commands.

Update and install all available packages

sudo apt upgrade -y

Update and install only networkmanager:

sudo apt install network-manager -y