A lot of effort has been put to update the X server configuration HOWTO to describe the use of HAL, but, as far as I understand, HAL is now being deprecated. Yesterday, when I upgraded my Xorg server from version 1.7.7 to 1.9.2 (current stable), I had a hard time getting back my French keyboard layout, because no documentation was available, apart of some random posts in forums, with a lot of bad advice. The HAL .fdi files now seem to be almost useless (maybe some X11-team guy can confirm?). Finally, I read on a blog that I had to configure the Xorg server through evdev, using files such as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-synaptics.conf (see <http://geekfault.org/2010/05/09/choisir-son-keymap-x-org-1-8-sans-xorg-conf-ni-hack/> for the file contents; sorry, it's in French, but the conf files should be understandable by anyone). Maybe the X server configuration HOWTO should: - clearly state the level of HAL deprecation (is HAL still needed?), - give the Right Way of configuring the keyboard and pointing device. This documentation is really to short to help: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/xorg-server-1.9-upgrade-guide.xml And this one: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/xorg-server-1.8-upgrade-guide.xml is a good starting point but will not be read by anyone because the 1.8 Xorg server has never been stabilized. I haven't been able to find it using Google yesterday, when I met my keyboard configuration problem.
(In reply to comment #0) > The HAL .fdi files now seem to be almost useless > (maybe some X11-team guy can confirm?). Yes, they are. > This documentation is really to short to help: > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/xorg-server-1.9-upgrade-guide.xml > > And this one: > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/xorg-server-1.8-upgrade-guide.xml > is a good starting point but will not be read by anyone because the 1.8 Xorg > server has never been stabilized. I haven't been able to find it using Google > yesterday, when I met my keyboard configuration problem. This one is mentioned in the previous one for users migrating from 1.7.
Please search before posting bugs. We already have a request filed for the HAL -> xorg migration. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 349698 ***
