Losing Debian to the cancer known as HAL

[Dirk <noisyb@gmx.net>]

Hello,

I have been using Debian/Unstable for more than 7 years.

Now I am switching to Gentoo because it really has become more attractive since Debian+HAL really isn't the operating system 
anymore I want to work with.

I was happy with Debian being an alternative with the choice and control for experienced users who wanted things go their way.

Ubuntu was the Debian derivate that took the other route of making Linux easier for people who don't need/care about that.

Now Debian is trying too hard to get where Ubuntu already is and makes itself redundant and obsolete by doing so.

We have now another operating system that tries to emulate Nanny-features we know from Windows and it enforces them by making 
HAL a dependency of XOrg.

There is no way to run Debian/Unstable without HAL anymore. It will be completely broken. Even the alternative configuration 
scrits have been purged from the package lists.

That is the future Debian/Stable has to offer for experienced users. A cancer-like process that sits in the background doing 
things they don't want.

So, If you dislike the service HAL has to offer you as much as I do let me suggest you have a look at Gentoo. Their system seems 
to be exactly what we want.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml
(the root partition should be 4+GB large and the inode size 4096 or smaller)

You can boot their CD in VirtualBox and run:

net-setup eth0;passwd;/etc/init.d/sshd start

and then you can connect from outside with ssh into the Gentoo system and configure eveything by copy&pasting the instructions 
of that quick install manual.

After that you will have a base system pretty much like the Debian base system.

Then you can continue installing X11.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml

You will notice that installing X11 in Gentoo does not require or depend on HAL.

I am not affiliated with Gentoo but I see a raising demand for Linux without HAL
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux+remove+HAL (Yes, almost 500.000 results)

And since I used Debian until this day I come here to tell you how I solved the HAL problem myself.

Take this mail the way you want. For me Debian stopped making sense when they tried to become another Ubuntu. We don't need two 
Ubuntu's with HAL. One is good enough. Debian should have stayed with the professional users who know best how their Linux 
should work.


Dirk