First off, I want to express my appreciation for the dedication of the CentOS developers for providing us with the quality work they always do. This is a question and a request for explanation so that my little mind can understand what's going on.

And for those inquiring minds who want to know, I have already filed bug reports. ;^>

Over the weekend I went through several boxes here at home and upgraded from 5.2 to 5.3. I was a good boy and read the release notes first, followed the procedures recommended therein, and the upgrades went just fine.

I have to say that I was less than ecstatic when I saw my desktop machines install NetworkManager and PPP where they had not been installed before. A bit of poking at the new situation led me to the conclusion that NetworkManager is now a requirement of Evolution, and PPP is a requirement of NetworkManager.

Since these are desktop boxes that do not move around, and communicate via my in-house LAN over a single Ethernet interface, I don't see any pressing need for NetworkManager and PPP. I would appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this situation, since the only conclusion that I can draw so far is that this is unnecessary system bloat.

As used to happen on the sun-net-manglers list in years past:

Thanks in advance.