Ubuntu
hal package

Am I Supposed to get Hal Updates for Lucid?

Asked by Navneeth Chandrasekaran

I don't know much about the workings on of this Hal, but if I'm not mistaken, I read that it has been removed from Ubuntu. Yet, when I updated the computer today the following files were installed/updated.

Setting up libhal1 (0.5.14-0ubuntu6) ...

Setting up libhal-storage1 (0.5.14-0ubuntu6) ...

Setting up hal (0.5.14-0ubuntu6)

Is that all right?

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Best Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder) said : 		#1

HAL is still in the Ubuntu repositories.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal

So if you have it, it will be updated.

The question is whether it's still needed. According to the Alpha release notes it should be possible to remove it.

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1

However, in the forums there are discussions that Gnome desktop and Xorg X server still depend on it.

I haven't tried myself.

I'd say if you are a non-technical user just leave it alone. It doesn't harm that much.

If you are happy to play with apt-get and can handle the consequences just try apt-get -s remove and it will tell you what would be removed.

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Navneeth Chandrasekaran (navneethc) said : 		#2

Thanks Uwe Geuder, that solved my question.

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Navneeth Chandrasekaran (navneethc) said : 		#3

Hi, thanks for answering. I ran apt-get with -s option and it turns out that Banshee, the music player, depends on it.

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libgdata1.4-cil podsleuth libboo2.0.9-cil libtaglib2.0-cil libwebkit1.1-cil
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED
  banshee hal
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv banshee [1.6.0-1]
Remv hal [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]

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Uwe Geuder (ubuntulp-ugeuder) said : 		#4

Now I'm at a Kubuntu machine (installed from beta2 and updated since then) and tried myself:

$ sudo apt-get -s remove hal
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  hal kubuntu-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Remv kubuntu-desktop [1.174]
Remv hal [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]

So as far as dependencies are concerned I could indeed remove hal without anything else. (kubuntu-desktop is just a meta package which can be removed without any harm). However, I'm not sure whether I would lose some dynamic functionality, e. g. when connecting a USB device.

Without hal there is no need for hal-info either, I guess. And indeed no additional dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get -s remove hal-info
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  hal hal-info kubuntu-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Remv kubuntu-desktop [1.174]
Remv hal [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]
Remv hal-info [20091130-1]

Remains the library:

$ sudo apt-get -s remove libhal1
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gimp hal kubuntu-desktop libhal-storage1 libhal1
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 5 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Remv gimp [2.6.8-2ubuntu1.1]
Remv kubuntu-desktop [1.174]
Remv hal [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]
Remv libhal-storage1 [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]
Remv libhal1 [0.5.14-0ubuntu6]

So gimp requires libhal1. But gimp is no longer a standard part of Ubuntu, I have installed it manually.

What about banshee? Did you install it yourself? gnome dependencies say either rythmbox or banshee. At least older Ubuntus came with rythmbox (I don't have Ubuntu Lucid handy here)

So probably a very slim Ubuntu/Kubuntu can be installed without HAL. But as soon as you start to add applications, chances are that you get something where the dependencies haven't been removed yet.

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Navneeth Chandrasekaran (navneethc) said : 		#5

Yes, Banshee does not come as part of the default installation -- it has to be installed from the repos.

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Navneeth Chandrasekaran (navneethc) said : 		#6

Thanks Uwe Geuder, that solved my question.