On 4/13/2009 3:50 PM, 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:
I have not yet added hal; seems like unnecessary complexity at this point - I don't know how it will make life better.
The major benefit of hal is for people who don't actually *have* an "old" xorg.conf. In most cases, the X server can do a better job than a user at detecting and configuring the video hardware, while hal can do a better job than a user at detecting and configuring input hardware.
This means that, "out of the box" a clean X installation has a decent chance of working with zero configuration, at least sufficiently to get you running well enough to tweak. It also means that, as the specifics of the hal FDI database improves, you will automatically pick up improvements from upstream without needing to modify your configuration.
If you have a working X setup, then "replacing" it with hal may not provide much in the way of benefits. But the same argument can be made just on the decision to upgrade to 1.5.3 -- if your current version "works", why the motivation to upgrade? If its just to have the "latest and greatest" -- well that's hal.
--Mike
