Unstable dilemma

Today I went to boot up my computer and discovered that udev is broken...again. Now, I agree that something in the spirit of udev is probably a good idea, especially in the world of hotpluggable devices. However, the actual implementation has been flaky from day one, and this isn't the first time I've booted my computer and had my mouse or some other important device non-available. I decided that this is the last straw, and once I'd fixed the problem (running "/etc/init.d/udev restart" gives it enough of a prod that it finds the mouse devices), I went to remove udev for good.


The following packages have unmet dependencies:
hal: Depends: udev (>= 0.056-2) but it is not installable
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
gnome-desktop-environment
gnome-volume-manager
hal

Score is -923

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Keep the following packages at their current version:
udev [0.062-1 (unstable,now)]

Score is -1049

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
No more solutions.


Argh. Apparently gnome-desktop-environment depends on gnome-volume-manager, which depends directly on hal (there used to be an alternative, but it seems to have been removed). So I now have to decide whether to just grit my teeth and suffer along with hal, remove Gnome, or remove the Gnome metapackage and reinstall the non-hal stuff by hand.

As it happens, I don't use Gnome myself; it's just there for when other people are working on my laptop, so I'll probably just remove the metapackage and let the other stuff get deleted along with it. It's a bit annoying, though, that Gnome insists on installing a historically broken package rather than, say, Recommending it. (as far as I know the system will work fine without udev, you just won't get automounting of hotplugged devices)