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Apparently, though unproven, at 00:56 on Tuesday 16 November 2010, Dale did |
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opine thusly: |
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> Actually, it rendered mine broken and not usable. If upstream walks off |
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> the edge of a cliff, does Gentoo follow upstream then? What would have |
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> been nice is if Gentoo would have at least made it something that the |
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> user has to chose to do pro-actively and not the default. If they had |
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> done that, for say six months or more, then the devs would have been |
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> able to see the disaster and left it off by default. Actually, they may |
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> could have even seen that it wasn't going to last at all and then not |
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> ever have a user using it unless they chose too and enabled it |
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> themselves. It's not like hal lasted for many years as a "stable" project. |
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Actually it did last many years as a stable project. A very very very early |
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ubuntu was the first to start using it. That gives it about 3 to 4 years or so |
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- a long time in the software world. |
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In relation to the total number of Gentoo users, the number affected by HAL |
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was small indeed. I myself had no ill-effects across several machines (other |
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than XML-induced frustration). |
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Your experience, though painful, was not the norm. Sometimes devs have to make |
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hard decisions, like break a small number of user's configs. At least they |
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gave you a flag you could use. Once it was evident that HAL was a total POS, |
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they have another hard decision: revert to no-HAL? What will that break? How |
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many unknown setups out there that are the opposite of Dale? What about the |
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next version of X.org that will not support HAL? Do they arbitrarily revert |
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the default to sans-HAL only to make it something else next verion? That may |
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piss off a lot of users. |
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> I generally trust the devs. I did when I let hal take over the config |
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> of X since it was the new way of doing things. You think I feel the |
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> same way now? |
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I think you are colouring the whole canvas with your own singular experience. |
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One mis-judgement does not make a wreaked ecosystem, and shit does happen. |
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SOmetimes in this world you're the hammer, sometimes the nail. You were the |
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nail. |
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I don't disagree that HAL is an utter POS. I just don't agree with your |
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reasoning that brought you personally to that conclusion. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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