Hal provides an abstract view on hardware.

this abstraction layer is simply an interface that makes it possible to add support for new devices and new ways of connecting devices to the computer, without modifying every application that uses the device. it maintains a list of devices that currently exist, and can provide information about those upon request.

this package contains various device information files (also known as .fdi files) for the hal package. these fdi files contain additional information that help to describe the hardware more detailed, such as suspend/resume quirks for laptops, music player or photo camera types etc.