What is a HAL and how is it different from a driver?

Question

Windows

What is a HAL and how is it different from a driver?
I read in a book / Wikipedia and did not understand

Answer 1

On personal computers, HAL can essentially be thought of as a motherboard driver.

Is this line from Wikipedia not enough for you?

Answer 2

If I understand correctly, then:
The driver provides an interface for accessing the hardware.
HAL provides a unified interface for accessing hardware.
In the case of a driver, you may also need a program from the manufacturer to work.
In the case of HAL, any program will do, since the HAL commands are the same for this type of device.

Answer 3

HAL is an intermediate layer between user applications and device drivers provided by the OS. Thanks to HAL, applications do not need, for example, to read a file, specify the block / sector / head number for reading from disk, but just specify the file name.
HAL provides a standard hardware interface for user applications, as well as interfaces for drivers.
Those. access to hardware in modern operating systems occurs as follows:
User application <-> HAL <-> device driver <-> device
Usually, there is an abstraction layer before HAL, or even more than one.