By running the Reloaded LiveCD and taking a look at the differences, I found the plasmoid, and just for a try switched to it (the software installer does not allow them both), logged out and back in. I did have internet connection, but no icon in the systray. I right clicked in the systray next to the items in it, and entered the Settings. They were greyed out, so I unlocked the widgets, and checked ‘Networkmanagement’, clicked OK and the icon was there. This is how it looks like, details about the connection can be seen by clicking on the connection in the left part of the panel. Here’s a small pic of it:
Yes, that looks really nice. It just doesn’t work on my computer. It is openSUSE 11.2 and KDE4.5.1 from the new KDE4.5 repository. I followed your instructions but the icon never appears in the tray. xsession-errors says
plasma-desktop(16248)/kdecore (KLibrary): The library "/usr/lib/kde4/plasma_applet_networkmanagement.so" does not offer a qt_plugin_instance function.
plasma-desktop(16248)/kdecore (KLibrary): The library "/usr/lib/kde4/plasma_applet_networkmanagement.so" does not offer an "init_plasma_applet_networkmanagement" function.
And when I move the plasmoid to the desktop it says (in german) something like “This object can not be created because the requested object can not be found: org.kde.networkmanagement”. rcnetwork restart doesn’t make a difference. Knetworkmanager is installed but not running, could this be the reason? When I open Knetworkmanager I get a pop-up which tells me that “There is already another network-management-application running”. But I can’t see the other application. Any hints?