[gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
I didn't want to derail the ongoing thread about hal/xorg with this question there. Far as I remember I haven't done anything special concerning hal but at some point hal disappeared. And is not on my system anymore. I've always used and /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for starting X. What I'm wondering from seeing this kind of topic frequently here is if I'm running in some deprecated mode? If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon?
Re: [gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
On Mittwoch 04 November 2009, Harry Putnam wrote: I didn't want to derail the ongoing thread about hal/xorg with this question there. Far as I remember I haven't done anything special concerning hal but at some point hal disappeared. And is not on my system anymore. I've always used and /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for starting X. What I'm wondering from seeing this kind of topic frequently here is if I'm running in some deprecated mode? If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon? no but hal is going away soon.
Re: [gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
Harry Putnam writes: Far as I remember I haven't done anything special concerning hal but at some point hal disappeared. And is not on my system anymore. Strange. Is hal still in your USE flags? It is not really neded, but I think it's nice to have - maybe not for x.org, but for other things like automounting devices. Here's the list of my packages that need HAL: wo...@weird ~ $ equery d hal [ Searching for packages depending on hal... ] app-cdr/k3b-1.0.5-r6 (hal? sys-apps/hal) app-emulation/wine-1.1.12 (hal? sys-apps/hal) app-misc/hal-cups-utils-0.6.19 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.10) app-misc/hal-info-20090414 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.10) gnome-base/gnome-keyring-2.26.3 (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5.7) gnome-base/gnome-mount-0.8-r1 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.8.1) gnome-base/gnome-vfs-2.24.1 (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5.7) gnome-base/gvfs-1.2.3 (cdda? =sys-apps/hal-0.5.10) (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5.10) gnome-extra/nautilus-cd-burner-2.24.0 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.7) kde-base/kdebase-kioslaves-3.5.10-r1 (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5*) kde-base/solid-4.3.2 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.9) media-gfx/gimp-2.6.4 (hal? sys-apps/hal) media-libs/libgphoto2-2.4.6 (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5) media-sound/rhythmbox-0.11.6-r1 (hal? =sys-apps/hal-0.5) sys-fs/ntfs3g-2009.3.8 (hal? sys-apps/hal) sys-power/pm-utils-1.2.5 (=sys-apps/hal-0.5.10) x11-base/xorg-server-1.6.3.901-r2 (hal? sys-apps/hal) xfce-base/exo-0.3.105-r1 (hal? sys-apps/hal) xfce-base/thunar-1.0.1 (hal? sys-apps/hal) I've always used and /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for starting X. What I'm wondering from seeing this kind of topic frequently here is if I'm running in some deprecated mode? If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon? I don't think so. HAL will be replaced anyway by devicekit. You should be safe to keep your xorg.conf, as many people here seem to do. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
On 11/4/2009 10:51 AM, Harry Putnam wrote: I didn't want to derail the ongoing thread about hal/xorg with this question there. Far as I remember I haven't done anything special concerning hal but at some point hal disappeared. And is not on my system anymore. I believe that some packages in portage recently masked off the hal USE flag (GNOME stuff, maybe?), so if those were the only packages relying on hal it might have gone away. I've always used and /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for starting X. What I'm wondering from seeing this kind of topic frequently here is if I'm running in some deprecated mode? If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon? The answer is a solid who the heck knows. If it works for you now, don't mess with it. Wait for the Xorg/hal/devkit/whatever situation to settle down before you go making any drastic changes. Some people, like myself, are running X with hal and no .conf file and it works like a champ. I get better hardware detection with hal, especially on my laptop, than I ever got manually. Other people have had problems with hal and Xorg not detecting their hardware at all. What you are frequently seeing is those people reminding everyone, every time the topic come up, that you don't *need* to use the new hal-ified way if it doesn't work for you. All of this is probably moot because hal itself is going away and being replaced by devicekit, but not yet because devicekit isn't quite ready. What the configuration situation will be under devicekit I have no idea, though I would hope having no configuration file would still be a goal for the devkit team. --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
On Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:25:49 -0500, Mike Edenfield kut...@kutulu.org wrote: On 11/4/2009 10:51 AM, Harry Putnam wrote: I didn't want to derail the ongoing thread about hal/xorg with this question there. Far as I remember I haven't done anything special concerning hal but at some point hal disappeared. And is not on my system anymore. I believe that some packages in portage recently masked off the hal USE flag (GNOME stuff, maybe?), so if those were the only packages relying on hal it might have gone away. I've always used and /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for starting X. What I'm wondering from seeing this kind of topic frequently here is if I'm running in some deprecated mode? If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon? The answer is a solid who the heck knows. If it works for you now, don't mess with it. Wait for the Xorg/hal/devkit/whatever situation to settle down before you go making any drastic changes. I'd just save all the config files for future reference, specially if you are going to keep your hardware for a long time. For the rest, use whatever works for you right now. I remind you also of quickpkg, in case you need to test and revert packages quickly. Some people, like myself, are running X with hal and no .conf file and it works like a champ. I get better hardware detection with hal, especially on my laptop, than I ever got manually. Other people have had problems with hal and Xorg not detecting their hardware at all. What you are frequently seeing is those people reminding everyone, every time the topic come up, that you don't *need* to use the new hal-ified way if it doesn't work for you. This whole hal stuff has always been a mess. Yes, it works for a few persons out of the box. But for those that don't, it has brought a lot of trouble. I've never suggested anyone ditching hal when it worked for him or her. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I can't help but to think that I've never liked hal because it's a monsters that doesn't solve the problems that it was created to solve, except in a few cases out of pure chance. I still don't know what's so amazing about the hal automounting stuff, when a simple udev rule can do exactly the same without tainting all my software. Now hal has proven to be what a lot of people knew it was from the beginning, just think of the lot of wasted hours, and the other lot that will be wasted to remove all the metastases on every single program it has touched with its tentacles. Hopefully a big part of it would be a conversion rather than a complete rewrite. However, I am sure that they've learn from the experience, and that's a good thing, it's useless to talk now about *what* could have been done and *how*, we have to look forward, everyone including those that just like me do not like hal. It's the kind of thing that happens when we integrate non-mature technologies into every single product under the sun: if they succeed they are visionaries. If they don't, then everyone complains, human nature I guess. :) -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Another angle on hal/xorg thread
Harry Putnam wrote: If my setup using no hal, and xorg.conf is going to become outdated and stop working anytime soon? I seriously doubt the xorg.conf is going away in the foreseeable future so I wouldn't worry. I haven't heard any of the developers on xorg mail list talking about this either (I may have missed an email or two but...). Best regards Peter K
