HAL??? and other assorted non-PS Linux topics

[bilbous]

So what is the deal with HAL (hardware abstraction layer)? Is it really better than what came before or is it just another attempt to raise the bar for participation. I have looked at this in the past and mostly been unable to decipher configuration. I just installed Slackware 12 and there in devices are all my drive partitions, none of which are mounted (except maybe xp which I enabled in the installation) and all (~!xp?) of which give some cryptic error when I try to open them. All appear to have mount points in /media. So what was wrong with /mnt? Is it now deprecated?


About Slackware and X: this installed using vesafb for a driver and not NV or NVIDIA, having installed the full DVD install should I have any trouble running the nvidia installer? is there some other considerations I may need to make? It appears there may be some problem with the latest kernels and installing the 8776 nvidia module which is the last known to work with my particular hunk of junk, is it possible that the kernel itself has gone beyond what can support this particular installer? Maybe I should update my bios and see if the later versions work.

[miadon]

the nvidia driver should be able to install without the need to install anything else, when you use Slackware

[Induane]

As far as /media and /mnt I think /media has been designated for removable storage devices like floppy disks, compact discs, usb sticks, etc, while /mnt is reserved for extra partitions and network mounts, not that you can't reverse it with any issues at all.  I think HAL works in conjunction with DBUS to give good plug and play support, and its always worked well for me.

[bilbous]

All the new distros I have installed have stuck the hard drive partition in /media when they deigned to notice them at all. I just find that the whole abstraction movement is confusing. Udev and DKMS just serve to obfuscate. Sure it may be nice to centralize configuration but I find the syntax to be arcane and hard to fathom. Configuration always was kind of obscure but it seems to me it was less so than now. And then you get into SELinux ....

[Induane]

More nowadays configuration is automatic with sane settings, then you can still tweak as desired or necessary if you are a power user and know how.  It seems the right direction to me - make things easy on the new user but have the powerful backends for configuration that make linux so flexible. 

[bilbous]

If you say so, it just seems more things to break in incomprehensible ways.

Speaking of SELinux, more distros are recommending/defaulting to enforcing so that will be a consideration for future PS installers. Try and help a newbie figure their way around that. I have been using Linux in a half-assed kind of way for quite a while and SELinux will take more work than I want to do to understand.

[Induane]

I dunno, for me Ubuntu just "Works"

I try to approach it from an end user standpoint not a power user standpoint so I can be objective but I'm experienced enough as a linux user now that my objectiveness is flawed and useless.

[bilbous]

Heheh  well I bit the bullet and solved my video problems with a 7600 gs. I am guessing it will be a while, a year?, until it drops out of the current release module so it should be easy to setup. I'm not by any means a power user, I am a power poser, knowing just enough to play with things I don't understand and get things so they maybe work the way I want. Sometimes it means repeated re-installations, of course. Now if I could just win the World Poker Tour I'd be all set!