Xorg and HAL

January 15th, 2010 1

A few things have been brewing in Linux-world concerning the replacement of HAL for some time now: Ubuntu’s Lucid Lynx (10.04) for example will ship without it.

Xorg 1.7.4 was uploaded to Debian/unstable three days ago and comes with udev support, which also means that support for configuration of input devices via HAL was dropped (at least for Linux).

So, in case you might wonder how to configure your input devices, here’s an example for my Synaptics touchpad. Similar to HAL, put your .fdi-files into “/etc/udev/rules.d/”.

ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="xorg_synaptics_end"
KERNEL!="event*", GOTO="xorg_synaptics_end"
ENV{ID_INPUT_TOUCHPAD}!="1", GOTO="xorg_synaptics_end"

ENV{x11_options.MinSpeed}="0.50"
ENV{x11_options.MaxSpeed}="1.3"
ENV{x11_options.AccelFactor}="0.025"

LABEL="xorg_synaptics_end"

Although you can get rid of HAL completely, some (Gnome-) packages are still built with HAL support and dependencies. I for example had to rebuild gnome-power-manager and sound-juicer but after that I was able to disable HALs start-script. Another problem you might face is the dependency of bluez (the bluetooth implementation) on HAL.

If you’re interested: Xorg developer about udev-directions

Finally done

January 15th, 2010 1

After intensive redesign of derHofbauer.at and the decision to drop dasSchandblatt (my old blog) in the near future, my new website goes on-line today. I still have to test and complete the layout for Internet Explorer though.

This blog will be about OpenSource, web-development and computer stuff mostly.

Have fun!

Update: IE8 was no problem at all, IE7 a little bit and, no, for a private “fun”-page I’ll never do IE6-support again. Even if it was easy. This website “needs” transparent .png-graphics because it’s much easier for me to use the alpha-channel instead of fixed graphics.