[ale] hald

[Jim Popovitch]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> If I may (having come from the NT side long ago)...

Me too! ;-)

> HAL as in hald isn't quite the same thing as HAL as in NT's HAL.  In NT
> (substitute XP, 2000, 2003, whatever), the HAL sits between the OS and
> the hardware and was key to the now long-forgotten capability of running
> NT on Alpha AXP and MIPS processors.  
> 
> But in Linux, HAL is a mechanism to help straighten out the mess that is
> impermanent devices, along with udev, etc.

What you describe above are two nearly identical things.  HAL is HAL, in 
Microsoft's or any other vendors' OS.  The reason for having a HAL is so 
that the OS can be consistent across different hardware, regardless if 
those differences are the platform, processor, power mgmt, BIOS, or bus.

-Jim P.