Hi, I was recently talking to a colleague about how ACPI-WMI notification events on Windows work relative to Linux. On the Windows side a userspace application is able to directly capture all ACPI WMI notification events. On Linux right now the WMI drivers in the kernel will capture certain notifications and convert them into keypresses. There are various situations that events coming through are not actually keypresses but rather messages that should be displayed directly to the user in userland. They vary widely in criticality, but let me give a few examples: * You have attached a power adapter to a port that does not accept power. * The docking station you have connected is not compatible with the current port. If you have a Thunderbolt port, attach the docking station to that port. * Your dock fan has failed. You may experience reduced performance until your dock is serviced. * Your docking station is not capable of providing enough power to meet the minimum system requirements for normal operation. Please attach an additional supported power adapter with at least <value> watts to your system. These messages can of course be output to the kernel syslog, but there are a few disadvantages: 1) Most users will not monitor syslog regularly. 2) Some messages are more severe and may require immediate attention 3) The messages can't be translated. So I was thinking it's probably better to notify userspace and let usespace parse the contents of the ACPI buffer to show translated messages in UX somewhere. Before going to far down that path I wanted to see what others thought of this. Furthermore the kernel supports a ton of userspace notification mechanisms - What is best suited for this purpose?
