# FreeBSD Zen



## vinhsynd (Dec 5, 2010)

I just can't seem to achieve it, but it seems like every other FreeBSD user has it - that uncanny ability to wait for ports to get the new-hotness without breaking a sweat.

It just hurts so bad to stare at xorg 7.5 / xorg-server 1.7 and the resultant curse of HAL when my Linux-y friends are playing with xorg 1.8/1.9 and KDE 4.6 without any HAL hex.

Oh, the pain.


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## wblock@ (Dec 6, 2010)

xorg 7.5 runs just fine without hal, so maybe you're looking at the wrong thing.


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## Oxyd (Dec 6, 2010)

KDE 4.6 is currently scheduled for release on 26 January 2011. So if your friends are playing with it, they're playing with some development build.

And yes, you can checkout the latest development version as well. Don't expect it to be a smooth ride, though.


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## fronclynne (Dec 6, 2010)

By and large I use my computer(s) to look at pictures of ducks & kittens and write all-caps e-mails to politicians.  Fiddling with xorg and its demonic settings and options is a bit tiring.  Until it can go out and find the fluffiest kitten pictures it's just a graphical layer to let me do that for myself, so I'd rather it didn't try to be too helpful.  Anyway, the nurse says it's time for my metamucil bath, so good-night.


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## nekoexmachina (Dec 6, 2010)

in fact, the only thing i miss from linux is kvm.


> It just hurts so bad to stare at xorg 7.5 / xorg-server 1.7 and the resultant curse of HAL when my Linux-y friends are playing with xorg 1.8/1.9 and KDE 4.6 without any HAL hex.


Why does it hurt?
Because for me, it doesn't 
what features do you miss from 1.8/19 xorg?


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## vinhsynd (Dec 6, 2010)

Well, it all started with my wife getting me a belkin n52te, and a razer anansi. I wasn't able to get them working without HAL, so I did a lot of looking around, and actually got a partially working HAL policy for the razer anansi but couldn't set the programable keys - in the end I ended up returning both. It probably would have ended there...

However, I noticed a friend of mine also had the n52te, and he runs one of the *too's - it works fine for him. So in talking to him it turned out he just recompiled the xorg server and kde versions which use udev from "the standard overlay" and this combination automagically made it work. Now I haven't used any of the gentoo based systems so from the little I understand that is supposed to be their version of the ports system.

Anyhow, thats when the green-eye'd daemon started.

I realize that its probably possible to make the above hardware work in FreeBSD with/without HAL and its likely I just can't discern how to do it irrespective of what version of Xorg is used. But it still tweaks my adrenals a little bit that he's got it running in linux without any issues and I can't yet test out if I could do the same yet on FBSD.

Now granted I'm not really great at online games, so maybe I should take up looking kittens - that metamucil bath sounds pretty invigorating. However the main point I wanted to express is that I wish I could achieve that calm/laid-back attitude everyone else has around here and not get competitive when friends show off about being able to do something I just can't seem to make work.


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## vermaden (Dec 6, 2010)

vinhsynd said:
			
		

> It just hurts so bad to stare at xorg 7.5 / xorg-server 1.7 and the resultant curse of HAL when my Linux-y friends are playing with xorg 1.8/1.9 and KDE 4.6 without any HAL hex.



Who forces You to use HAL? --> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=7956


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