[Techtalk] Basic Q, can't find answers elsewhere

[mgmonza at iceland.freeshell.org]

Hey, y'all,

This is a beyond basic question but I've run out of options.

Google, DuckDuckGo, Ixquick et al have returned nada.

One of the systems my laptop can boot into is Linux Mint 17.1.  On other 
Ubuntu-based systems, I've able to find and disable processes at startup.

On Linux Mint, I can't.  I got lucky with shutting down Samba, and 
followed that URL's advice to rename the .conf file.  But I've been trying 
for a long time to disable wlan connectivity at startup and just can't.

I renamed networking.conf to networking.conf.stop but there's been no 
effect.  It just -feels- like that's not the solution.  There's nothing in 
this system like that endearingly convoluted renaming from S to K in 
init.d directorties. Weird as it was, it worked.

Can someone help on this?  I've got a long line of other processes I want 
to strangle till they gasp out their last breath (okay, kill), but this 
networking thing is the first I want to get my mitts on.