I just added my 2 cents to bug #42886, and found this one. I also just discovered the different step sizes described here on my laptop. My opinion:
On Thinkpads having two mixers (a soundcard mixer and a special thinkpad master mixer daisy-chained to the soundcard, which is different from the soundcard's master volume control, as with my T41p here), I see four scenarios possible: a) The little special buttons control only the the "special thinkpad mixer". If this special mixer is set to "mute" (e.g. from a Windows session on a dual boot system), one has otherwise no control over this except using sudo, echo and cat, as this Mixer is otherwise only controllable via /proc/acpi/ibm/volume. This is IMHO not elegant on a desktop system. The soundcard's master mixer can still be controlled via the GNOME/KDE panel applet, or by a user-defined hotkey (e.g. CTRL+ALT-"+"/"-", as on a computer with just a plain standard keyboard). This would be my personal favourite. b) The little buttons control both mixers (the current behaviour). This leads to a chaotic behaviour (in turn leading to this bug report and #42886 ). c) The little buttons control only the soundcard's master control, leaving the "special thinkpad mixer" unaccessible to a non-privileged user. I would not like this, but as I know of /proc/acpi/ibm/volume, I could live with it. d) The little buttons control nothing, this is of course a non-option. Make your choice ;-) Regards Martin -- thinkpad: volume button weighting https://launchpad.net/bugs/39098 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
