I have a T61, and it seems to be working fine with Debian... Here's the output of dmesg and lsmod: erikm at hemingway:~$ dmesg | grep acpi [148892.948904] thinkpad_acpi: ACPI backlight control delay disabled [1045284.497027] thinkpad_acpi: ACPI backlight control delay disabled [1269770.057042] thinkpad_acpi: ACPI backlight control delay disabled erikm at hemingway:~$ lsmod | grep acpi acpi_cpufreq 12807 1 mperf 12421 1 acpi_cpufreq thinkpad_acpi 47494 0 rfkill 18516 5 thinkpad_acpi,bluetooth,cfg80211 snd 38551 13 snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,thinkpad_acpi,snd_seq,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_seq_device nvram 12897 1 thinkpad_acpi processor 27389 3 acpi_cpufreq If you open a terminal and type the following commands: $ dmesg | grep acpi $ lsmod | grep acpi The first command shows bootup messages from the kernel (the grep acpi filters out lines that don't contain "acpi"). The second command lists the current loaded modules (aka drivers). What you can see on my machine is that the thinkpad_acpi module is loaded. You should be able to run these commands on your machine to see if you already have this module loaded. -Erik On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Olwe Bottorff <galanolwe at yahoo.com> wrote: > > Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Noob needs to add driver > > Hi Olwe, > What distribution are you using? > > -Erik > > Sorry! I'm on Ubuntu 11.10-64. > > On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Olwe Bottorff <galanolwe at yahoo.com> wrote: >> I'm a rank amateur at serious kernel stuff, so I'm coming to you folks. My >> Thinkpad T61 puts off lots of heat. I lift it up and it's VERY hot. I fear >> for its health. I'm going to reapply thermal grease, but I've found a page >> that talks about a driver >> here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thinkpad-acpi >> With this driver installed I can supposedly install software that will >> control the fan. Can I get some coaching on how to install this driver? >> >> Olwe >> GM,MN > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -- Erik K. Mitchell erik.mitchell at gmail.com