Manually Configure Network

Just a reminder of how to manually configure a network in Linux. Let's say you have a desktop that will never leave the house or the confines of your home, wired network, so you don't want to fool with network manager. Your /etc/network/interfaces file should look something like:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

If you're using dhcp, this should do it. Then you can disable network-manager applet on startup or remove it altogether (sudo aptitude remove network-manager).

Of course this isn't an exhaustive guide and doesn't cover many situations, but this particular situation is one I found myself in and I believe fairly common.