[gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Helmut Jarausch]

Hi,

having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)

Many thanks for your sharing your experience,
Helmut.

-- 
Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany

Re: [gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Dirk Uys]

http://www.ometer.com/hardware.html

Re: [gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:39:15 Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)
>
> Many thanks for your sharing your experience,
> Helmut.

There's no benefit as such. hal is a crock of shit that never worked right as 
the designer intended, and he said so publicly on his blog. He has a plan to 
replace it with something else that might work. It's similar to devfs which 
led to udev to replace it.

Meanwhile, trying to run KDE or Gnome on a box without hal is becoming more 
and more painful with each update. Even xorg is getting in on the hal game 
and using hal to auto-configure input devices.

Unless you know of a compelling need to remove it, chances are your life will 
be some much easier if you just add hal to USE and be done with it.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)

The benefit for me is that I plug my USB flash stick in my PC and it 
pops up in my desktop without me needing to enter voodoo console 
commands to mount it.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Norberto Bensa]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:44 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> The benefit for me is that I plug my USB flash stick in my PC and it pops up
> in my desktop without me needing to enter voodoo console commands to mount
> it.

+1

That and... this is my xorg.conf :

Section "Module"
        Load    "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Default Device"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        Option          "NoLogo"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        DefaultDepth    24
EndSection


Good luck in having that minimalist xorg.conf without hal.

[gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[James]

Helmut Jarausch <jarausch <at> igpm.rwth-aachen.de> writes:


> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)


This link is short and reasonable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(software)


Hardware Abstraction Layer is a buzz term that means
many different things to many different hardware
designers  who need software to make their designs
complete.


hth,

James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Hazen Valliant-Saunders]

Um, you are using the HAL weather you want to or not, it's not really an option!

The HARDWARE ABSTRACTION LAYER with respect to good ol linux happens
to be your kernel and it's drivers.

The bare metal registers within which all those bits are moved is
called the hardware; all those configuration files and source you
compile is considered the software, anything that creates the
transparency between the two is refereed to as the HAL (In windows 98
it was a single DLL file), in Linux it's the source code and binaries
of the kernel and drivers, all modern computers regardless of low
level arch have a HAL.

Regards,
Hazen.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:17 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Helmut Jarausch <jarausch <at> igpm.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
>
>
>> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
>> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
>> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)
>
>
> This link is short and reasonable.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(software)
>
>
> Hardware Abstraction Layer is a buzz term that means
> many different things to many different hardware
> designers  who need software to make their designs
> complete.
>
>
> hth,
>
> James
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
Hazen Valliant-Saunders
IT/IS Consultant
(613) 355-5977

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Alan McKinnon]

Please don't top post on this list. It's considered rude.

You are talking about HAL, an abstract concept.
The OP is talking about hal, a definite package - sys-apps/hal. Recent X.org 
uses it to autoconfigure input devices on startup


On Wednesday 04 February 2009 18:34:28 Hazen Valliant-Saunders wrote:
> Um, you are using the HAL weather you want to or not, it's not really an
> option!
>
> The HARDWARE ABSTRACTION LAYER with respect to good ol linux happens
> to be your kernel and it's drivers.
>
> The bare metal registers within which all those bits are moved is
> called the hardware; all those configuration files and source you
> compile is considered the software, anything that creates the
> transparency between the two is refereed to as the HAL (In windows 98
> it was a single DLL file), in Linux it's the source code and binaries
> of the kernel and drivers, all modern computers regardless of low
> level arch have a HAL.
>
> Regards,
> Hazen.
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:17 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > Helmut Jarausch <jarausch <at> igpm.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> >> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
> >> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
> >> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)
> >
> > This link is short and reasonable.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(software)
> >
> >
> > Hardware Abstraction Layer is a buzz term that means
> > many different things to many different hardware
> > designers  who need software to make their designs
> > complete.
> >
> >
> > hth,
> >
> > James



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Norberto Bensa <nbensa@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:44 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
>> The benefit for me is that I plug my USB flash stick in my PC and it pops up
>> in my desktop without me needing to enter voodoo console commands to mount
>> it.
>
> +1
>
> That and... this is my xorg.conf :
>
> Section "Module"
>        Load    "glx"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Device"
>        Identifier      "Default Device"
>        Driver          "nvidia"
>        Option          "NoLogo"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Screen"
>        Identifier      "Default Screen"
>        DefaultDepth    24
> EndSection
>
>
> Good luck in having that minimalist xorg.conf without hal.
>
>

Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my
xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in
xorg.conf at all these days?

Re: [gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Michael P. Soulier]

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On 04/02/09 Alan McKinnon said:

> Meanwhile, trying to run KDE or Gnome on a box without hal is becoming more 
> and more painful with each update. Even xorg is getting in on the hal game 
> and using hal to auto-configure input devices.

That explains why even on Ubuntu I shut off dbus and hal, and run fluxbox.

In Gentoo I'm using XFCE4 right now without hal. I can mount my own drives.

Mike
-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier@digitaltorque.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
--Albert Einstein

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Re: [gentoo-user] hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Michael P. Soulier
<msoulier@digitaltorque.ca> wrote:
> On 04/02/09 Alan McKinnon said:
>
>> Meanwhile, trying to run KDE or Gnome on a box without hal is becoming more
>> and more painful with each update. Even xorg is getting in on the hal game
>> and using hal to auto-configure input devices.
>
> That explains why even on Ubuntu I shut off dbus and hal, and run fluxbox.
>
> In Gentoo I'm using XFCE4 right now without hal. I can mount my own drives.

I thought it only did the automounting stuff if you were in the
plugdev group. That's the way the docs make it sound anyway.

Also, you can selectively disable hal automounting on certain devices.
For example I do not want it to automount CDROM but I do want it to
automount my USB memory stick.

Of course just getting rid of it completely does the job, too. :)

Paul

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote:
> Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my
> xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in
> xorg.conf at all these days?

Fonts are complicated :-)

IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf

The newer ttf fonts are better handled by fontconfig. This gives you the 
questionable benefit of replacing a somewhat-hard-to-read xorg.conf with an 
impossible-to-read XML file.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote:
> > Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my
> > xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in
> > xorg.conf at all these days?
>
> Fonts are complicated :-)
>
> IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf

you don't need any fonts in xorg.conf.

[gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote:
>>> Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my
>>> xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in
>>> xorg.conf at all these days?
>> Fonts are complicated :-)
>>
>> IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf
> 
> you don't need any fonts in xorg.conf.

That is true, but if I remove the section, fonts in Firefox seem to 
change.  So it does something.  It still works, but different.  No idea 
how/why.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Man Shankar]

On 08:40 Thu 05 Feb     , Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote:
> > > Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my
> > > xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in
> > > xorg.conf at all these days?
> >
> > Fonts are complicated :-)
> >
> > IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf
> 
> you don't need any fonts in xorg.conf.
>
I use the terminus font for my terminal-emulator and it doesnt work if that 
font-path is missing from xorg.conf. Urxvt complains of unable to load
font. Also i supply the font name as 

URxvt*font:     -xos4-terminus-*-*-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-*-u

in my .Xdefaults. 

-- 

Thanks & Regards,
Man Shankar <man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com>