Proposal for resolving powernowd/apmd vs. (k)powersave conflict

[Luka Renko]

Hello,

I am still looking how to make usable powersaved/kpowersave packages that
would not clash with kubuntu-desktop (and hopefully also ubuntu-desktop and
edubuntu-desktop). As you may know, the main problem is that powernowd and
apmd packages are not compatible with powersaved (as they do the same stuff
and there are known issues if both run at the same time). Debian powersaved
package has a rule to remove apmd and powernowd, which then also removes
*-desktop packages. :-(

I would suggest the following workaround for this "catch22" problem:

1. Get rid of "Conflicts: powernowd apmd" rule
This will allow powersaved/kpowersave to be installed on Kubuntu (including
the case where ubuntu/edubuntu-desktop is there). As this can lead to known
issues, we will also...

2. Change "/etc/init.d/powersaved start" to stop powernowd/apmd before
starting powersaved
Start should just call "stop" methods of powernowd/apmd rc scripts. Good
thing is that powersaved is started after powernowd and ampd:
/etc/rc3.d/S20apmd
/etc/rc3.d/S20powernowd
/etc/rc3.d/S25powersaved

That way user could decide to keep existing powernowd/klaptop solution or
switch to powersaved/kpowersave which will override already installed
powernowd/ampd.
I am not sure if such solution would have additional side effects for
gnome-power-manager in case that user would have both GNOME and KDE
installed and would change DE for different login sessions. I think g-p-m
has to cope with such case, as apmd is anyway not running on ACPI machines
and some CPUs also do not support CPU frequency changes (if there is no
cpufreq module loaded, powernowd is probably not started - need to check).

Questions:
1. Do we need to care about cpudyn/cpufreqd (also conflicting packages) that
are in universe but not installed by *-desktop?
    If yes, I could check them and see if similar workaround is possible
also there.
2. Is such solution too ugly to be accepted into universe (will not pass
revu process)?
3. Is it at all possible to push UpstreamVersionFreeze exception for such
packages? And that late in release cycle?
4. How much do we need to investigate impact on GNOME (g-p-m) for cases
where powernowd/apmd are not running?

I would really like to see your comments about this proposal. Therefore any
feedback will be more than welcome.

Note: I plan to use kpowersave with my Dapper install no matter what -
therefore if we will not be able to push latest kpowersave into universe, I
plan to create my own packages (I am still learning package creation ;-))
and share it for whoever might see them useful.

Regards,
Luka
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