Dynamic Device Handling on the Modern Desktop

David Zeuthen <davidz@redhat.com> and  Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>

This talk will describe how modern free software desktops using the Linux kernel handles device configuration. We describe how events created by the kernel will take its path from the kernel, through udev, D-BUS and HAL into every single application that needs to adapt to a changing environment. It will be explained how current applications, libraries and services are plugged into the device event processing and describe the new model away from static system-wide configuration to policy based and user owned preferences to handle devices.