Hi,
I'm currently reading the upstream "Considerations in adopting RHEL 8" document. The chapter about networking states that traditional networking scripts (shipped with the network-scripts package) are considered obsolete.
I bluntly admit I don't see the point in this. As far as I'm concerned, I've been a happy user of NetworkManager since the early days (when folks used to call it NotworkManager :oD). It's one of those nifty pieces of software that brought the Linux desktop to the masses - or at least a bit nearer to them - since it allows managing wireless and wired interfaces transparently and easily on a laptop or any computer with a wireless card.
On servers though, one of the first post-installation steps I performed was to get rid of Network-Manager and all its components. The servers I'm working on are relatively small-scale and have from one to four network interfaces. Each interface has a corresponding configuration in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, and that's it. From there, I rarely - if ever - touch it. In all my setups, NetworkManager is merely a useless layer of abstraction, and I like sticking to the KISS principle and shave off useless layers.
Maybe there's a reason to make NetworkManager more or less mandatory from now on, but I don't see it. So I thought I'd rather ask on this list.
Cheers from the foggy South of France,
Niki