All,
I recently pushed a new (alpha quality) backend for the media:/ kioslave which uses udev/pmount and therefore does not rely on HAL. I encourage developers here to try it out!
Please report failures to this list, not to the bugtracker, as it has not been tested much beyond mounting simple flash drives. Encryption support is buggy, but repairing it is my next task.
Rhis will NOT be made default for R14.0 due to the vast array of hardware that it still needs to be tested on, but if your distribution no longer works with HAL it may be better than nothing even in this alpha form.
To enable it, pass the -DWITH_TDEHWLIB="on" option to tdebase CMake.
Enjoy!
Tim