Bug#522683: RFA: acpi-support -- glue layer for translating laptop buttons, plus legacy suspend support
2009/4/12 Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>:
> Expect grumpy people every time that you add something new that they have
> to learn. I also had troubles with hal and X when I tried the X servers in
> experimental. But I have not read any serious criticism based on technical
> facts in the bug report you showed.
I don't know if the fact that hal has 65 (sixty-five) outstanding bugs
(many of which lay unanswered, some since YEARS), plus 10 forwarded
bugs, qualifies as technical.
But it's a fact. And not of the most pleasing kind.
An other fact is that there is quite a big effort in the linux
community to achieve fast start up, since this will strongly push
linux spread on small devices like palmtops or netbooks.
Hal is often horribly slow to start, spending several seconds in
no-ops, just waiting for things to happen.
A third fact is: if there's something new to learn, ok, it takes time
but it's always good.
But I'll need documentation. Basically the only documentation in the
hal package are these lines:
<quote>
HAL is a hardware abstraction layer
See http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/hal for lots of documentation,
mailing lists, etc.
<unquote>
Please note that at that address there are NOT lots of documentation.
There is something, mostly aimed at programmers.
(The hal-doc package, as well, contains documentation for the APIs)
I'm a user, pleased when things just work.
I'm less pleased when I have to configure things to make then work,
but I still feel it's ok.
When I have to depend on a piece of software that either works on it's
own, or it's impossible to configure, I start looking for that
well-known coloured window logo.
And I don't feel it's ok.
This is just my personal experience with hal; an experience that makes
me nostalgic of linux a couple of years ago. But I kind of feel I'm
not alone.
Cheers,
Luca
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