All about HAL

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mbradshaw

All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

hey guys im a noob to linux and to mint and starting a CSE degree. I came across something that I became curious about...HAL. apparently it stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer or Harware Annotation Library, but can someone give me a noob entry level explaination of what it is, what it does, and do I need it?

thanks
-Michael
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WinterTroubles

Re: All about HAL

Post by WinterTroubles »

Stumbled across this post and googled out of pure curiosity and my own desire to learn, found this wikipedia article that seemed to answer your questions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(software), of course you've probably already read it :lol:

And this from Techopedia http://www.techopedia.com/definition/42 ... -layer-hal
mbradshaw

Re: All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

interesting, so it seems to me that the HAL allows for exchange of information between physical harware (output) and for programs to use the information (in the form of input)...am i getting this right? and if thats the case, I dont have to worry about HAL because Mint would already have that...
am I getting close..?
WinterTroubles

Re: All about HAL

Post by WinterTroubles »

That was certainly my understanding :D , although it was your post that sparked my curiosity so my only knowledge is what I've read today.

This section, from the wiki link above, seems to indicate that HAL functions have been taken over by udev within Ubuntu , and hence main edition mint, in recent years.
HAL is now deprecated on most GNU/Linux distributions, such as parts of Ubuntu with functionality being merged into udev as of 2008–2010. Previously, HAL was built on top of udev, which was lower level.
mbradshaw

Re: All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

yeah that was my understanding of that sentence too! well hopefully I will learn a little more about HAL in my CSE classes, and if I do I will def put it out there for people who are wanting to at least understand what it is (like you and me)

Thank you!
-Michael
WinterTroubles

Re: All about HAL

Post by WinterTroubles »

You're welcome Michael :)

Out of my time spent on here, most of it is spent reading and researching in an attempt to learn because..... well some of us are strange like that, aren't we :lol:
mbradshaw

Re: All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

the last 3 months since I first got mint has been that way, one big learning adventture. And truth be told, I love it. I am def not comfortable enough giving any real advice on here, except when it comes to gaming, im a little more confident. I just read all the other posts and wonder how everyone became as good as they are. Im about to try LFS, and build my own distro, I think there is so much to learn by doing that and the people over there are almost as nice as the people here, though Mint will always be my go-to distro.
WinterTroubles

Re: All about HAL

Post by WinterTroubles »

My goals are far more modest, as your typical middle aged family man my main goal is simply to be able to manage and maintain a healthy home system, which is why Mint is such a good fit for us. That said I've always been the kinda guy who wants to know what everything does and why, so I fully expect, in the fullness of time, to learn far more than is necessary for my modest goal :lol:
Ginsu543

Re: All about HAL

Post by Ginsu543 »

I must say, I'm just piping in here because I really enjoyed the camaraderie of two new Linux Mint users united by a common desire to learn. Good show! :)

As for HAL (not that I am any level guru), it's been deprecated, i.e., no longer in use, for many years and iterations of Ubuntu/Mint. I do remember dealing with it when I first started using Linux (I started in 2008 with Ubuntu 8.04). HAL sat between applications and the kernel to allow applications to access devices with input from the kernel.

However, because it remained a layer between the application and the kernel, it slowed down the whole process. When they deprecated it and allowed udev to have access to devices at the kernel level, it made things faster because now it didn't have to go through a higher-level layer.

Anyways, check this out for more info.
WinterTroubles

Re: All about HAL

Post by WinterTroubles »

Many thanks Ginsu543, I've added that link to to reading list :D
Roodog
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Re: All about HAL

Post by Roodog »

I saw HAL 9000 in "2001 - A Space Oddity" - does that count? :D
Mint 21.1 64gb Desktop intel 4core i5-2500
mbradshaw

Re: All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

Roodog wrote:I saw HAL 9000 in "2001 - A Space Oddity" - does that count? :D
haha I HOPE NOT...we have some MAJOR problems if that HAL is running things lol
mbradshaw

Re: All about HAL

Post by mbradshaw »

Ginsu543 wrote:I must say, I'm just piping in here because I really enjoyed the camaraderie of two new Linux Mint users united by a common desire to learn. Good show! :)

As for HAL (not that I am any level guru), it's been deprecated, i.e., no longer in use, for many years and iterations of Ubuntu/Mint. I do remember dealing with it when I first started using Linux (I started in 2008 with Ubuntu 8.04). HAL sat between applications and the kernel to allow applications to access devices with input from the kernel.

However, because it remained a layer between the application and the kernel, it slowed down the whole process. When they deprecated it and allowed udev to have access to devices at the kernel level, it made things faster because now it didn't have to go through a higher-level layer.

Anyways, check this out for more info.
epic read! thank you so much! very interesting stuff though a bit technical, it will make more sense as I progress down my software eng path!
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