netctl For Linux

netctl is an open source command-line software written by various developers from the Arch Linux project, distributed for free and designed from the ground up to act as a profile-based systemd network management solution.

The netctl tool can be used to configure and manage network connections through profiles. It supports wireless connections, wired setups on both desktops and servers, as well as roaming for mobile users, facilitating easy management of network profiles.

netctl is considered a native Arch Linux project and it's designed to replace the obsolete netcfg command-line utility in original Arch Linux systems, as well as on any other GNU/Linux distribution that is based on the Arch Linux operating system.

With netctl, you will be able to list available profiles, save which profiles are active, load saved profiles, stop all active profiles, start, stop or restart a certain profile, switch to a specific profile, display runtime status of a profile, as well as to enable, disable or reenable the systemd unit for a profile.

All these functions are available from the command-line interface, as options. You can view them all at a glance, including the usage message, by running the ‘netctl’ command in a terminal emulator application or any other console environment.

netctl is usually installed by default in an Arch Linux operating system, but you can also install it manually by download the latest source package and compile it. To achieve this task, download and save the source package on your computer, unpack it and open the drop to a shell prompt or open a terminal emulator.

In the console environment, run the ‘make’ command to compile netctl. Then, after a successful compilation process, run the ‘sudo make install’ command as a privileged user or the ‘make install’ command as root to install it system wide and make it available to all users.