VL-Hot: A Non-polling Alternative To HAL

"Continuous querying to check for new or removed hardware consumes CPU cycles and energy. On older, legacy hardware or any system with limited processing power, including the lowest end of today's netbooks, using HAL can actually impact system performance in a noticeable way. On battery operated systems it also translates into somewhat shorter battery life. For those interested in green computing and reducing energy consumption the continuous polling activity by the HAL daemon when no hardware changes take place is simply wasteful. ,p>"VL-Hot, developed for Vector Linux, provides an alternative that doesn't require continuous hardware polling. Instead VL-Hot uses udev triggers to pop up the required icons. The Vector Linux developers have VL-Hot working with lightweight window managers like JWM and IceWM provided that the PCMan File Manager is installed. I'm quite surprised that other distributions which aim to be lightweight haven't incorporated VL-Hot."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Knoppix: live CD par excellence(Feb 20, 2009)
• How to Obtain the Dell/HP Server (May be other vendors) Service Tag in Debian(Oct 26, 2008)
• antiX M-7, The Fat-free Mepis(Nov 06, 2007)