i managed to get it running
i tried to configure wpa_supplicant before starting roam but now that i started roam before wpa it worked
the good news is that i DID manage to connect to another wireless access point other than my own (which wicd just refuses to do)
the bad news is that it is much slower than wicd for some reason
wicd takes 2 seconds at most to load a guestbook or this forum, roam takes about ... let me restart roam and check, brb
ok i'm back, it seams roam loads in the same 2 seconds as wicd, that's odd, the first time it was much slower
let me reboot and check again