You are describing two different things. In KDE nm-applet, the "random" button you see in edit connection just assigns a random mac to the device when activating a specific connection, it doesn't tell nm what interface to use. The line above that "Restrict to device" will do that, but ONLY for that specific connection, or ap. NM will use any wifi interface it finds, unless it is an unmanaged device.MichaelBlucher wrote: <snip>
The main difference I see between the two systems is in the Network Manager.
Under Knoppix, it has a field for "device" which is set to my wifi cards mac address.
Under Debian Stretch, it has a Random mac address button. Even if I key my wifi cards mac address in manually it still fails to detect any wifi points.
Is it possible that the "Random mac address" function is a problem for some wifi cards?
Michael B.
Random mac during scan does cause issues connecting with a lot of devices, but I haven't heard of it keeping all the access points from showing up. You can try it. It's easy to turn off, but not through the GUI. The random button in the gui is for cloned-mac, not scan-rand-mac setting. You don't have to set the cloned-mac to anything to get the device to scan.
Don't make it difficult trying to compare debian to knoppix and expecting it to work the same way.