RFC: Kernel changes that may affect desktops

[Matthew Garrett]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 07:14:52AM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

> how common are docking stations in practice?
> (as opposed to port extenders)

I'm using the kernel definition here - that is, a dock is any ACPI 
device that may request a removal via ACPI notifications and requires 
ACPI methods to be called to complete that removal. Most of these do not 
include media bays, though ones containing media bays are common on 12" 
systems. The problem is that it's not trivial (and perhaps impossible) 
to tell from the kernel whether you have:

laptop -> media bay
  |
 dock

or

laptop -> dock -> media bay

since the dock and the bay devices aren't tightly associated in the ACPI 
device tree. So it's not possible to make the change in behaviour 
conditional on finding a dock with a media bay.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org