I haven't used ubuntu for a while - it has been a couple years that I gave up because last time I used it I had many frustrations with basic functionality (wifi/sleep on laptop close) . I have a brand new dell precision running 14.04 from the factory and was hoping that things would be better but in 2016 I am still having wifi problems.
I am sitting here with an IP address, fully authenticated and connected and cannot access the internet, out of nowhere wifi just drops off. I cannot ping the DNS's or the even the gateway. dmesg, syslog, nm-tool reveal nothing useful.
~50% of the time it does not even try to connect to my work network even though I have selected "automatically connect when available"
I tell NetworkManager to connect with a saved username and password and yet it asks me for the password every time, it requires me to type it in twice occasionally before it authenticates.
It also asks if I want to ignore the lack of a valid cert, of which I click the box "Dont ask me again" - it asks me again, every time.
NetworkManager really is terrible - it has never worked on anything I have used and requires constant tweaking to keep it functional. I had better results from conf files with slackware back in the 00's.
So yeah I am using an intel wifi card and all the drivers are up to date that I know of. What exactly is the issue here? Why cannot I not maintain a connection? Why does NetworkManager not remember anything I tell it?
I posted below an image of the common questions section - maybe NetworkManager should be replaced with something easier to use!?