From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 17 20:00:34 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D344F106564A for ; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:00:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: from oproxy2-pub.bluehost.com (oproxy2-pub.bluehost.com [67.222.39.60]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9D9FC8FC12 for ; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:00:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 15184 invoked by uid 0); 17 Mar 2011 20:00:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO box543.bluehost.com) (74.220.219.143) by oproxy2.bluehost.com with SMTP; 17 Mar 2011 20:00:34 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=apotheon.com; h=Date:From:To:Subject:Message-ID:Mail-Followup-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To:User-Agent:X-Identified-User; b=gikJrYGAmFljQ8UEsmYF12QZyVyslJ8/X90yRkklXYDz7ETXqp5Q8bgPZN5MyeawEJU1QAaPuozJTPGco/jCzUEMGyA+PtFYodKXFngnyI19mJNIKTX99HK8h/oM4M7e; Received: from c-24-8-180-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.180.234] helo=kukaburra.hydra) by box543.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q0JN2-0005yq-Pk for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:00:33 -0600 Received: by kukaburra.hydra (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:48:52 -0600 Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:48:52 -0600 From: Chad Perrin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20110317194852.GA15133@guilt.hydra> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20110317144200.GA28942@takino.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="9jxsPFA5p3P2qPhR" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Identified-User: {2737:box543.bluehost.com:apotheon:apotheon.org} {sentby:smtp auth 24.8.180.234 authed with ren@apotheon.org} Subject: Re: HAL must die! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:00:35 -0000 --9jxsPFA5p3P2qPhR Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 05:35:04PM +0100, Ivan Voras wrote: >=20 > Well yes, that's one thing: if you use HAL, everything must use HAL > and you can't pick and match incompatible applications and force half > of the things in xorg.conf. There should be a way to override it on a piecemeal basis. Seriously. Everybody who thinks it's a good idea (by way of analogy) to write command line utilities that default to not letting you specify any options at all, and if you use one option to do something non-default you have to specify *all* options even when the specification is exactly the same as the default -- raise your hands. I don't expect to see many hands. >=20 > As for me, I'm running without any xorg.conf (really, I don't have the > file at all), all my desktop applications are using HAL and everything > is autodetected and "just works", which is as it should be. In my experience, about one third of the time HAL makes X work great, and the other two thirds of the time it fails in some way that requires me to create a complete xorg.conf file just for one or two options. Worse, from what I've seen, the xorg.conf auto-generation doesn't always match the defaults HAL provides very well. As a result, auto-generating an xorg.conf often results in a configuration that works even *worse* than HAL's automatic configuration, and as a result a lot of work needs to be done to get configuration to work. For something like what HAL does, in addition to allowing piecemeal custom configuration, it should also provide a way to get the *exact* configuration the automatic configuration management software. I haven't looked into it in *too* much depth, but so far I have not seen any sign of that kind of helpful functionality either. It's a common problem for popular software systems these days, I think. People design software meant to eliminate the configuration and management hassle from the end user, but it doesn't always work perfectly. Unfortunately, it so zealously attempts to guess what the user wants that it effectively *disallows* easy fixes when the user discovers that something needs to be "fixed". This is, in short, bad software design. I blame Microsoft, GNU, and Canonical for this trend, mostly. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --9jxsPFA5p3P2qPhR Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk2CZaQACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKX4hACg2v1GdvHeTp4ywFWnmV2eGqKr PqcAoPwleotu4HEnW5ktZ2d3UK4p8TfP =VzJp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --9jxsPFA5p3P2qPhR--