[oe] MACHINE_FEATURE changes

[Phil Blundell]

On Sat, 2009-11-21 at 18:23 +0100, Holger Hans Peter Freyther wrote:
> Ah that is a bit unfortunate. You should be able to open /dev/apm_bios more 
> than once so you should be able to have the real APM running and then open it 
> again in the fso daemon. Didn't this work?

The apm_bios interface is not exactly a paragon of good design: it's
only become as widespread as it has by historical accident, it
represents a weird in-kernel combination of IPC and actual hardware
control, and it isn't available cross-platform in any reliable fashion.

Rather than seeking to perpetuate the use of /dev/apm_bios by random
applications, I think we should encourage other distros to follow FSO's
example and replace it with other mechanisms that are better suited to
the 21st century.  If we could standardise on a single D-Bus API for
user-facing power management, with some kind of daemon responsible for
arbitrating those requests and converting them into whatever operations
are most suitable for the underlying kernel support (which might
be /dev/apm_bios in some circumstances) then that would be perfect.

p.