LaptopMode

[David Zeuthen]

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 21:27 +0200, Danny Kukawka wrote:
> Yes, but I don't understand, why you would implement this in HAL. Why do we 
> need this e.g. on a desktop system or on a server (e.g. s390/s390x). 

Big-iron stuff like this traditionally have bunch of other software
installed too that doesn't make sense for it. This is fine as long as
it's not used.

> This is the problem. If you implement this in HAL, it's IMO a little  
> maintainance nightmare. On one site you need this only on laptops (and not 
> all user and distibutions want this) on the other you must permanently check 
> for each new kernel if there is something changed in the kernel parameter.

How different distros implement this is up to each distro.. The only
thing that the SetPowerSave() does it to call a script that configures
the system to operate in one of two modes: 

 - high-performance while being connected to AC

 - low-power operation while running on battery source

This is the current abstraction we got. Maybe the abstraction needs
improvement (maybe it needs to take more arguments and have more
options? I don't think so, but...) and we'll just do that.
Realistically, I think we got the exact right abstraction - we don't
really want to provide more options to the desktop-level software as I
see it but I could be wrong.

Ideally all the distros and operating systems should rally around a
common set of userspace bits that is called when SetPowerSave() is
invoked but I'm not holding my breath for that. But what we can do here,
and lots of people from different distros are on this list, is at least
to encourage distros to become more similar.

Cheers,
David