Ok, I just verified that HAL works perfectly fine for what we want. In fact, it does make thing easier for people as you don't have to mess with those device symlinks :)
I don't suspect anything wrong with GCC 4.xx now, as I think the ubuntu package is compiled with 4.0.3. I think the report on that may have been a very early version 4 or a buggy distro.
However, since I encountered no trouble, I don't know what's wrong with at least with one person's ubuntu...
Jesse