Yes!
That did it. =-)
And of course, this does survive a reboot.

Curiously enough (or maybe not), Switch On Wi-Fi / Switch Off Wi-Fi in the UI does not get greyed out, it just goes unresponsive.
Pity, it shouldn't be too difficult to add an Always connect Wi-Fi check-box (or something similar) in the General Settings Tab.

It's a great application but it seems to me (from what I have seen on the Launchpad page) that the maintainers are not too keen on it.
Last release 1.7.4 was on 2016-01-25.

Yes, in the event my ADSL goes dark.

Yes, but i'd have to be doing it every time I boot.

Thank you very much for your input.

Cheers,

A.

Another option might be rfkill to turn it off.

Not so much.

I'm sorry to have to report that I made a mistake when evaluating my results.

The line I added to the manager-settings.conf has no effect on how wicd starts up.

I installed wicd-curses but there's no option (I can find) that does what I want to do.
ie: that Wicd does not switch on Wi-Fi at  boot time and uses just the wired connection.

Sorry for the confusion.  :^ /

Cheers,

A.

Thank you but it should have been obvious to me. (I lost my *.ini instincts long ago ...)
The second I hit 'Submit' it dawned on me that there had to be at least one *.conf file for this app somewhere.

I looked in that file but as it was directly related to specific (AP) settings and not global ones, decided not to touch it.

I don't have it installed, will have a look.

Thanks for your input.

Cheers,

A.

There is also the per-AP settings in /etc/wicd/wireless-settings.conf which have a possible line of automatic = 1 or automatic = 0. That line tells wicd whether to connect to the AP automatically when in range, or not. To be sure, the wicd-curses UI offers a toggle for achieving this (without manual file editing), and I would guess the other UI's do as well.

No ...
It is not in "Preferences" but that's because not all possible settings are represented in the GUI.

In /etc/wicd there are three configuration files which can be opened/edited (as root).
The one that has the settings reflected in Preferences is manager-settings.conf:

[Settings]
backend = external
wireless_interface = wlan0
wired_interface = eth0
wpa_driver = wext
always_show_wired_interface = True
use_global_dns = False
global_dns_1 = None
global_dns_2 = None
global_dns_3 = None
global_dns_dom = None
global_search_dom = None
auto_reconnect = True
debug_mode = 0
wired_connect_mode = 1
signal_display_type = 0
should_verify_ap = 0
dhcp_client = 0
link_detect_tool = 0
flush_tool = 0
sudo_app = 0
prefer_wired = True
show_never_connect = True

I saw the wired_connect_mode = 1 line and guessed that there probably was a possible default setting ie: wireless_connect_mode = 1 which would accept the value 0.

I added it and it worked.   =-)

So:
Open manager-settings.conf (need to be root) and add the line wireless_connect_mode = 0.
That will have Wi-Fi off when the app starts and will survive a reboot.

Of course, you can turn Wi-Fi on again but it will not survive a reboot unless you either delete the added line or set it to wireless_connect_mode = 1   

Cheers,

A.

I use the default Wicd 1.7.4 application in my Devuan ASCII installation.
It is, in my limited opinion, much better and easier to use than the network managers I have come across in other distributions.

I have now moved from sharing a wifi account with a neighbor on the same floor to an ADSL subscription of my own.
It costs me about the same and do not have to deal with interferences from other Wi-Fi setups in the building.

So I have set up Wicd to use the wired network as the default profile but would like Wi-Fi to be switched off and be able to switch it on should I want to instead of being switched on and be able to switch it off.

The thing is that switching it off holds only for the session and on reboot Wi-Fi is on again.

Unfortunately, the Wicd FAQ https://launchpad.net/wicd says nothing about this and asking a question there usually goes unanswered till it is dropped.
There seems to be very little work being done on Wicd and I rather fear for its future.

So: does anyone know how to change the start-up behaviour in Wicd?
ie: Wi-Fi Off instead of On. (it is not in Preferences).

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

A.