netplan vs NetworkManager on Ubuntu 18.04 and above

Question

What is the concept of renderer in a netplan configuration file?

What practical difference does it make between choosing a networkd and a NetworkNamager renderer?

Can anyone (in the second case) proceed with nmtui or nmcli?

Answer 1

The difference the renderer makes, is the decision to run either systemd-networkd or NetworkManager. This distinction is identified by a file in /etc/netplan/*.yaml.

networkd is normally used in server installations, where the network environment is fairly static.

NetworkManager is normally used in desktop installations, and was used in all prior versions of Ubuntu. NetworkManager is easier to use in environments where network requirements change a lot... like in wireless networking. nmcli/nmtui/etc are NetworkManager commands.

To use NetworkManager, your /etc/netplan/*.yaml file should look like:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

sudo netplan generate

sudo netplan apply

reboot