[bmicraft]

NetworkManager can use iwd as a wifi backend instead of wpa_supplicant, but nm isn't needed as iwd can also manage the networks on its own. iwd should never run at the same time (on a single network interface) as wpa_supplicant, as wpa_supplicant is (almost?) entirely superseeded by it.

[cassianoleal]

Oh ok, so I misread the arch diagram. I thought that iwd was talking to the iwd backend, which would then delegate to NM or CM.

It looks like you're right [0], so I stand corrected.

It also looks like it can't fully replace wpa_supplicant though:

> IWD and the NM backend are work in progress and the capabilities are still limited.

[0] https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/networkmanager

[zamadatix]

That paragraph of the article looks to be ~6 years out of date according to the network manager version number it lists, around the time of the initial iwd release, and the whole article seems to be at least 2-3 years out of date since then iwd is well into version 2.x now.

Distros like Ubuntu have defaulted to iwd as the NM backend for Wi-Fi for a couple years (and now in the LTS version). It really is a quite popular and stable replacement to wpa_supplicant.

[cassianoleal]

Alright, thanks for the information! :)