" #Xorg versions 1.4 through 1.7 (and optionally later versions) use HAL for several things related to input devices." http://www.x.org/wiki/XorgHAL Under this #Debian VM, hosted on #IBM #OS/2, the mouse has some issues related to hotplugging (as noted in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log). Accordingly, the target of the operation on /etc/X11/Xorg.conf expressed in the link seems to be agnostic since the directives to be included in /etc/X11/Xorg.conf do not reference explicitly HAL or udev. http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/341.html And more importantly, after I applied those, I see no more references to hotplugging issues in my OS/2 Debian VM /var/log/Xorg.log